


the shape i'm in

by apocryphal



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alpha Bucky Barnes, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Body Dysphoria, Canon-Adjacent Through CA:TWS, Depression, Don't let it scare you off, Established Relationship, Happy Ending, I promise, M/M, Mpreg, Omega Steve Rogers, Period Typical Bigotry, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Suicidal Thoughts, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, World War II, but just a little bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-15 05:20:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 96,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28558245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apocryphal/pseuds/apocryphal
Summary: Steve had always thought that if he’d been born two decades earlier, he’d have made an excellent suffragette. As it is, Omegas have had the right to vote for the last twenty-four years, so instead here he is, trying to sneak into the Army.Again.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 273
Kudos: 362





	1. 1936 - 1938

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here I am, six years late to the Stucky fandom with the fanfic I've been working on for over a year. Ugh. It has been a labor of love, though perhaps not talent, and would not have been possible without bitacti very patiently enduring all of my bitching and vagueblogging along the way. It was not beta'd, because (a) I don't know anyone in this fandom, and (b) betas seem to have gone out of fashion? Maybe I'm just old. In any event, all mistakes are my own.
> 
> I'm not a fan of extensive tagging, but if you're looking for any specific triggers, you can find a fairly detailed (but spoiler-free) list [here](https://the-apocrypha.tumblr.com/post/639422294501015552/detailed-warning-list-for-the-shape-im-in-below) of things that appear in this fic that people might be wanting to avoid. Feel free to contact me with any questions.

They get married when Steve is eighteen, Bucky nineteen. The Great Depression is in full force and no one is getting married these days—Alphas have no money for flowers and fine jewelry, and Omegas have sold off the contents of their hope chests, fabrics and dishware traded for bean soup and potatoes. There are no babies on the streets, and half the schools in Brooklyn now sit vacant, while the ones that remain open have doubled in pupils. Father McGinley does the service in exchange for a seat at the dinner table and a pack of cigarettes. 

Of course, Steve has been living with the Barnes’ for the last four months, so the neighborhood is abuzz with rumors about why exactly Bucky and Steve are rushing into a mating _now_ instead of four months ago. There hasn’t been a shotgun wedding since Ciaran and William Malley last year, and unlike the movie theaters, neighborhood drama doesn’t charge you a quarter a view.

The truth that they don’t know is that Bucky proposed a year and a half ago, at the top of the Martyr’s Monument in Fort Greene. 

  
  
“A hundred and—eighteen—steps,” Bucky huffs, flopping dramatically back against the doorway. “Holy cow, it’s freezing up here. You didn’t say it would be freezing.” 

“That’s—” Steve coughs. “—what the—” Coughs again. 

“Don’t you dare have an asthma attack right now.” 

“ _—gin—_ ” Steve wheezes, but the coughing fit takes over before he can get the rest of the words out. 

“Best cure for asthma there is,” Bucky says drily, and Steve knows without looking that he's rolling his eyes. A moment later an old milk bottle filled with Mrs. MacPhearson's bathtub finest is pressed into his hand, but Steve doesn't drink any, just focuses on slowing his breathing and counts up to seven on the inhale, back down to one on the exhale. 

The wind whips viciously a hundred and forty feet up, and the wrought iron fence around the little platform does nothing to shield them. The view, though, is unparalleled, given that this _is_ the tallest point in Brooklyn. Steve can see what must be the entire lower half of Manhattan from here, full of twinkling lights that gleam in neat rows and columns against the night sky. A swath of inky darkness that is the East River cuts between it and their own borough, smaller and quieter, with only a few streetlights dotting the major avenues. 

When Steve’s breathing feels more under control, he pulls their bag toward him and starts digging through the contents. 

“Okay, so this is pretty ace,” Bucky decides, having walked a full circuit around the platform. “For free. Dunno if I’d pay forty cents to do it, you know, legally.”

“That includes the elevator,” Steve puts in. 

“Elevator mighta been nice. Whatcha doin’?” 

“I need your help, come here.” 

“Is that paint?” 

“Yeah. Come hold up a match so I can see the wall.” 

“Rogers. Are we _vandalizing_ a war memorial?” 

Steve glances up at him. “You say that like you didn’t just break into one fifteen minutes ago.” 

“Okay, but why do we need to vandalize it?” Though even as he asks, Bucky is kneeling next to Steve and accepting the box of matches. 

“Because,” Steve says, and slips the handle of the paintbrush between his teeth so he can unscrew the lid to the paint, “Willie Beauford said no Omega would have the guts to sneak up here.”

“Wait a second. So when you said, ‘Hey, Bucky, Willie Beaufort says the Fort Greene memorial is a neat place to go at night—” 

“He did say that,” Steve insists. “An’ I asked him how you get in after hours, and he laughed and asked why I would want to know, ‘cause I shouldn’t even be out after dark. Gimmie some light?” 

Bucky strikes a match and holds it close. “So this wasn’t some romantic night out with your boyfriend? It was just you being a spiteful little shithead?” 

“It could be both.” Steve holds the brush to the granite, squinting in the flickering light. 

“I shoulda fuckin’ known.”

“Hold it _closer_ , asshole.” 

Bucky moves the flame closer obligingly, his side pressing against Steve’s, and the warmth paradoxically sends a shiver down Steve’s spine. This close, heads inches apart, he can smell Bucky, the heady musk of Alpha that had only deepened, richened since Bucky’s first rut two years ago. It makes his stomach flutter and his nether regions do… things. 

Steve is still waiting for his first heat to come, the only one left in their entire class. The doctors say he might never get it at all, on account of him being so sick and skinny, but Steve thinks that’s horseshit. He’s gonna have a heat, even if it comes a little late. He’s _gonna_. 

“Hey. We only got so many matches, Stevie, this ain’t the Sistine Chapel here.” 

Steve swallows, and starts painting letters. He moves quickly enough that Bucky only has to strike four more matches before _S ROGERS, OMEGA AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD 10/17/35_ is written in small, neat calligraphy, just above where the platform meets the wall of the monument. 

“Hey. Lemme do mine, too,” Bucky says, nudging his shoulder. 

“I’ll do it.” 

“I wanna do it.” 

“If you do it then they'll shut down the whole damn park 'cause it'll look like aliens came down and left a message for us." 

"My handwriting's not _that_ bad." 

But Steve is already painting Bucky's name, just above his own. 

"You're such a brat," Bucky says. 

When Steve finishes, Bucky lights one more match just so they can admire their handiwork, and then they resettle a few feet away, pressed together with their backs against the granite wall, gazing out at the city through the wrought iron fence. Bucky opens the bottle of gin, tips it back and takes a long drink, and then passes it to Steve. 

It’s hot and sharp down his throat, like a blade, but Steve swallows four times because that’s one more than Bucky had had. He sets the bottle down, and tucks his hands under the bends of his knees. Bucky’s arm settles around his shoulders, and Steve wriggles into the warmth gratefully. From here, in the distance, he can see a bonfire burning, probably in Tin City down in Red Hook, and in the far south beyond Prospect Park, he can see the flashing lights of King’s Theater. 

“Hey, Steve.” 

“Yeah?” 

“You’re gonna marry me one day, right?” 

Steve’s head whips to the side. “ _What?_ ” 

Bucky turns to look at him, and licks his lips. “You know. One day. Like, if I asked you to marry me. You’d say yes, right?”

“You’d ask me to _marry_ you?” Steve says, in a voice that’s a pitch too high. 

“‘Course I would, you mook. What, you think your Ma’s been payin’ me all these years?” 

“But—but _married?_ ” 

“Mated. Married. Yeah.” 

Steve’s mouth is hanging open unattractively. 

Bucky’s arm pulls away, and he squirms his legs apart from Steve’s. “It was just an idea. Never mind.” 

“Bucky—hey, no—” 

“Don’t worry about it.” 

“ _Shut up_ ,” Steve snaps. “Give me a second, will you? I thought we were just gonna get drunk tonight, all right, I wasn’t expectin’ a _proposal_.” 

“Ain’t a _proposal_ ,” Bucky mutters. 

Steve rolls his eyes, but lets Bucky sulk for a few minutes while he processes this new piece of information. 

He decides that more gin is needed, and takes another swig. 

Bucky holds out a hand when Steve is done, and Steve passes the bottle back and folds himself up small against the wind again. 

“You’d really… wanna marry me?” Steve asks, eventually. 

“‘Course I wanna marry you,” Bucky says. “Jesus, Steve, I’m crazy about you. Always have been.” 

“Yeah, but, you know. When you get older, maybe you want different things.” 

“Like what?” 

Steve wraps his arms around his shins. “Maybe an Omega who’s not sick all the time. Or not so scrawny. Or… you know. One that’s got—” His face is flaming red, and he can barely get the last word out. “ _—cycles_.” 

“I don’t care about any of that, you _numbskull_ ,” Bucky says hotly. 

“Maybe you should.” 

“Well, I don’t, okay? If you don’t wanna marry me ’cause you don’t like me that much, then that’s fine, you can say no, but don’t do it ‘cause of some dumb idea like you think I don’t like how you look.” 

“No one likes skinny Omegas.” 

“ _I_ like skinny Omegas. Especially ones with big mouths who vandalize war memorials. Any other complaints you got?” 

“Well,” Steve says, slowly. “You _are_ a Protestant.” 

“You can convert.” 

“But I don’t wanna convert.” 

“Jesus Christ, Rogers, then _I’ll_ convert. Are you gonna marry me or not?” 

“I thought you weren’t proposin’.” 

Bucky groans theatrically. 

Steve snakes an arm around his waist and tugs him closer. “Don’t be so dramatic. Of course I’ll say yes. In a few years, when you do it properly. Okay?” 

Bucky laughs. “Yeah. Okay,” he says, and wraps his arm around Steve’s shoulders once more. 

  
  


They don’t get those years of waiting, though. 

The other part of the truth is that while the Barnes have been partially insulated from the current economic situation, they are both working for a fraction of their prior income. Bringing in the orphan Omega may have been the Christian thing to do, but loaves of bread can only be sliced so thin. Furthermore, Bucky’s eldest sister had her first rut a month after Steve moved in, and social mores dictate that it’s now inappropriate for her to sleep with her younger sisters—but because she’s also a female, she can’t share a room with Bucky, and Bucky won’t let his younger sister be out of a bedroom, so now _Bucky_ is on the couch, _Steve_ sleeps with Alice and Grace, and _Becca_ sleeps in Bucky’s room. 

Gender is… complicated, at the best of times. 

This may be why Bucky is getting ready in his room with his father and uncles, and Steve is in the girls’ room, being prepped by Mrs. Barnes and Becca, though they share neither of his own genders. 

Despite that, they have managed to press and fold Steve into a suit that’s so sharp he feels like one of Grace’s paper dolls. 

“An’ Monday’s for health, an’ Tuesday’s for wealth, an’ Wednesday’s—the best day—of all,” Grace is chanting to herself in the corner, shining shoes. 

“Mom, stop _fussing_ with it,” Becca says, batting her mother’s hands away. “His hair looks fine.” 

Steve’s hair is neatly combed in a perfect part to the right, the same way it’s been for every Sunday for as long as he can remember. If it’s good enough for God, it’s good enough for Bucky, is what Steve figures. 

“Are you sure you don’t want just a bit on your eyebrows, dear?” Mrs. Barnes asks, running a finger over Steve’s left brow consideringly. 

“He’s not that kind of Omega, Mom, let him be.”

A knock on the door. “ _Aunt Winnie!_ ” one of the many young Barnes cousins calls from the other side. “Uncle George wanssa know if you’re all done with the Brilliantine!” 

“There, see? It’s fine,” Becca says, swiping the tin and fixing the lid on. “If the boys don’t get this soon they’ll just show up looking like hobos, and blame us for hogging it the whole morning.” 

Mrs. Barnes sighs as Becca sashays over to the door with the Brilliantine in hand. “I suppose,” she says, and then redirects her attention. “Alice, why don’t you start helping Gracie take out her pins?”

“I can take out my own pins!” Grace shouts, dropping Steve’s left shoe mid-polish and slapping her hands over her head. “Alice makes it _hurt_.” 

Alice rolls her eyes and smoothes a hand over her own curls. “Don’t be such a baby. If you do them yourself, you’ll look like an old dried-out mophead, and you know it.” 

Grace sticks out her tongue. 

Mrs. Barnes puts her hands on her hips. “Gracie, bring me the shoes. Becca, can you take Grace’s pins out, please? Gently? And Alice—” 

“Yes?” Alice asks brightly. 

“Bring me the collar?” 

Alice squeals, and dives for the vanity. 

Steve puts his shoes on, trying not to inhale any starch from the suit as he bends over to tie them, and when he straightens Mrs. Barnes has covered the mirror with an old towel. Behind him, he hears a lid lifted from a box, and his heart trips into double time. Steve can hear excited whispering, but Becca and Grace must have moved to his left side now, so he can’t quite make out the words. He angles his head to the side, just a bit. 

“Face forward!” Mrs. Barnes barks. 

Steve rights himself immediately. “I wasn’t trying to _look_ ,” he mutters. 

He is ignored. 

“Close your eyes!” Alice says, bouncing up beside him. “No peeking, no peeking!” 

Steve sighs, and closes his eyes, facing perfectly forward. His shoulders straighten and his chin juts out, waiting. His skin feels suddenly electric as Mrs. Barnes’ skirt bushes against the fabric of his trousers, and he shivers involuntarily. Steve presses his hands into the chair, not daring to wipe them on his suit, and when a slip of fabric wraps around his neck he has to force himself to take in a slow, measured breath. Mrs. Barnes’ hands are sure and steady, bringing the ends of the fabric together just above the hollow of Steve’s throat. He can feel cold metal on the ends of the ribbon—grommets? Bucky surely hadn’t sprung for grommets—but before he can suss it out the ends are pulled together, and there’s a quiet _snick_ of the lock. 

Steve opens his eyes, and they go reflexively to the mirror, though it’s still completely covered with a towel. 

“You look lovely, Steve,” Mrs. Barnes assures him, and squeezes his shoulder.

Alice sighs dreamily. “I wish _I_ was an Omega.”

Steve thought the collar would itch, actually, but the ribbon is made of something soft, and it feels smooth and cool against his skin. He takes in a deep breath, ignores the quiet wheeze of his lungs, and is also surprised to find that his neck doesn’t feel at all constricted. The weight of the lock doesn’t pull too much, and as he exhales it nestles perfectly into the hollow of his throat. 

Oh, well. If Steve is going to be collared like a dog for anyone, it’s Bucky. 

  
  


Bucky, of course, looks amazing. He’s in his best suit, and his hair is slicked back in the Clark Gable style he’s been fond of lately, and the way his face lights up when Steve steps into the living room is an image that Steve tucks away for later, when he has pencils and paper on hand. Mrs. Barnes kisses Steve’s forehead before Steve steps up in front of Bucky, presses a square of fabric into his pocket, and then Father McGinley starts the ceremony. 

Steve is standing the wrong way to hear what Father is saying perfectly, but he doesn’t mind—he’s been to enough mating ceremonies that he’s heard all the claptrap before. Compassion, honesty, deference, honor to God...

Bucky’s mouth twitches and Steve retroactively translates ‘oh-bee-ends’ to ‘obedience’, and has to bite his lip to keep from snickering. 

Bucky gently nudges the toe of his shoe, and Steve nobly waits a full minute before subtly kicking back. Bucky's mouth twitches again, and he kicks back, harder. Steve struggles to keep a straight face, and is just gearing up to kick him back again when Mrs. Barnes clears her throat loudly. 

Bucky waits a respectable few minutes more, and then slowly, silently, presses the toe of his shoe over Steve’s. Steve tries to pull his foot out from under, but can’t, and hastily turns his laughter into a coughing fit. 

“James Buchanan Barnes,” Father McGinley says, and Bucky straightens guiltily, but it turns out that they’ve just reached the vows portion of the ceremony. 

At the very end of the ceremony, when the time comes, Steve reaches into his right pocket and withdraws the square of fabric that Mrs. Barnes had pressed into his pocket earlier. It feels the same as whatever is around his neck—white satin, he sees, when he holds it up. As he unfolds it, he becomes aware that a hush has fallen over the tiny living room. 

A single, silver key is revealed in the deepest fold of the fabric, plain and just less than an inch long.

Steve looks up to meet Bucky’s eyes, and his mouth goes dry at how calm, how _ready_ he looks. 

“Omega, as you give this key,” Father McGinley says, “so also do you give yourself to this Alpha. May you always cherish him, honor him, obey him, and grow together in God’s love. Alpha, as you accept this key, so also do you accept responsibility for this Omega. May you cherish him, guide him, protect him, and grow together in God’s love.”

Bucky takes the key, and Steve is left with only a square of satin in the palm of his hand. 

Father McGinley smiles. “As it says in the Gospel of Matthew, those whom God hath joined together, let man not separate. Therefore, on this day, we recognize the solemn vows of commitment that Steven and James have made today to one another. By the power vested in me by God and man, I now pronounce you mated as Alpha and Omega, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” 

“Amen,” says the living room in unison. 

“Amen,” Father McGinley agrees. 

  
  


After the ceremony, as is tradition, anything in the house that’s reflective has been put away or covered, and Steve spends dinner pretending to be desperately searching for anything that could be used as a mirror—he almost manages to peek with a glass watch face and a silver gravy boat before they’re snatched away by laughing relatives. Failing that, he bribes the small Barnes cousins one by one, presenting them with candy and asking them to tell him what his collar looks like, and the children give him increasingly ludicrous answers. 

“It looks like— _poop_ ,” says Earnest, and bursts into giggles. 

Steve groans theatrically. “Earnest, come on. I gave you three jawbreakers for that!” 

“Poop!” Earnest repeats, and then runs off, jawbreakers clutched in his fist. 

Penny rushes over to take his place. “Ask me! I’ll tell you what it looks like, Steve, ask me!” 

“Promise, no lies?” Steve asks, holding up a pack of candy cigarettes. He can’t keep the grin off his face. 

“Promise,” Penny says, and greedily snatches the box of candy cigarettes she’s handed. She then proceeds to tell Steve that his collar is made of unicorn hair and monkey brains, and runs off gleefully with her prize. 

Later, when they are alone in their new apartment that doesn’t even have a bed, let alone lightbulbs, Bucky takes off the collar and presents it to Steve in the glow of candlelight. 

It’s a simple white satin band with a steel padlock. As perfect for Steve as any collar was going to get. 

“I tried to make it not so bad,” Bucky says, almost apologetic. “I know you hate ‘em.” 

“You spent a lot of money on it,” Steve says. 

“Yeah, well, I didn’t splurge for engraving or anything, so we could still get good money for it at the pawn shop,” Bucky offers, and Steve laughs. 

He rubs the smooth satin between his fingers, considering. 

“I don’t mind it that much,” Steve says eventually. “And it’s not like the old days, where we’re supposed to wear them all the time—just for church and holidays and stuff.” 

“You’re sure?” Bucky asks. 

Steve nods. 

“Here,” Bucky says, and holds out the key to the collar. “You’d better take this, too, then.” 

Steve takes it, and places it in the palm of his hand where his collar is already nestled. Then he sets the whole lot of it on the floor behind him, and turns his attention back to Bucky. 

After all, they have a marriage to consummate. 

  
  


Steve isn’t the first one outside the Geneva Employment Agency, but he’s pretty close. The newspaper stalls on Jay Street are still shuttered, and he can hear the distant horns of the cargo ships coming up the East River to drop anchor at the docks, where Bucky will spend the day unloading and reloading their hulls. It's backbreaking work, and it doesn't pay as much as the cannery did, but Bucky hadn't had much choice about it after the cannery closed. Steve, meanwhile, has found a few families on the block willing to pay him to do their laundry, but it's not enough money.

The man that he gets in line behind is in an identically shabby black suit and tie, only where Steve’s suit hangs off of his body in a scarecrow sort of fashion, this man’s muscles are threatening to rip through several key seams. He looks Steve up and down, snorts, but doesn’t say anything else. 

Two more men arrive together, conversing quietly, and it's a good few minutes before they take notice of Steve. Their conversation stumbles to a halt, and Steve busies himself rereading the various job notices that have been enticingly pinned to the outside of the agency. 

Horace Sterling, who Steve hasn’t seen since he graduated from high school, is one of the next ones to file into line, and he barks a laugh when he catches sight of Steve. “Rogers, what in God’s name do you think you’re doing?” he asks. 

“It’s Barnes, now,” Steve says, chin jutting out. 

“You’re saving his place in line, then? That’s cheating, you know.” 

“Bucky’s got a job at the docks,” Steve replies. “I’m saving a place for myself.” 

Horace laughs. “Sure thing, sweets.” 

Steve scowls, and turns back to the job notices. 

It’s only minutes later that the two men behind him brush past with a muttered, “‘Scuse us,” and send Steve stumbling back a few paces as they plant themselves directly behind the muscled man. _Cutting in line_. 

Steve looks around, but there’s only Horace, who’s chortling, and a handful of other indifferent expressions. 

“Excuse me,” Steve says, and then again, louder, when the two men ignore him. “ _Excuse me_.” 

They peer back at him. They’re both easily twice Steve’s age, though not quite twice his size, and the left one with the bushy mustache raises an eyebrow. 

“Something you wanna say, boy?”

“I was in line before you,” Steve says boldly. 

“No you weren’t,” Mustache says. 

His partner, a redhead, folds his arms over his chest. 

“Yes, I was,” Steve says. “I was here first, and I was behind that gentleman. You’re in my spot.” He gestures at the muscled man in the suit, who merely rolls his eyes and turns to face the other way. 

“Don’t think so,” Redhead says mildly. “John, what’d you think?” 

“Don’t think so, Milt,” Mustache agrees. He turns to the line at large and raises his voice. “Anyone else? Think we cut ahead of this little Omega here?” 

The line is a study in irritated boredom. 

“Well, there we are, then,” Mustache says, pleased. “Glad that’s settled.” 

They turn around, and Redhead mutters “Didn’t have these problems when they still wore their damn collars,” and Mustache laughs and Steve feels a rush of hot anger that contracts his hands into fists, straightens his spine, sets his jaw. 

“Excuse me,” Steve says roughly, and shoves his way between them. 

“I don’t think so,” Redhead growls, and grabs him by the arm, but Steve is ready and kicks him in the shin with the back of his heel. “Shit!” 

Steve struggles to free his arm, twists his arm outward so that Redhead’s wrist is forced to rotate at an unnatural angle and releases him, but just as that arm is freed his other arm is grabbed instead. Steve _hates_ how the man’s whole hand closes around his bicep. Redhead jerks him closer but Steve’s dominant arm is free now, and he slugs him _hard_ in the ribs. 

“You little _bitch_ ,” Redhead wheezes, stumbling back, but then there’s a sharp pain as Steve is grabbed by the hair and yanked toward Mustache. He tries to kick out at him, but Mustache jerks him so hard Steve’s eyes water, and then there’s a foot kicking his knees out from under him, and he’s shoved to the ground so hard he breaks his fall with his shoulder because he can’t get his hands out in time, and smacks the side of his head on the sidewalk. 

His ears ring, and his vision swims for a moment. His shoulder throbs distantly. 

“Oh, just leave him alone,” he hears Horace say, sounding exasperated. “They aren’t gonna give an Omega a job, anyway, he’s wasting his time.” 

Steve grits his teeth and pushes himself up, ignoring the wave of nausea that slams him as little black spots dance on the edges of his vision. He grabs the lamppost next to him and braces himself as he stands, blinking in the direction of Mustache and Redhead, trying to get his vision to clear enough to properly glare. After a beat, possibly out of sheer stubbornness, the world rights itself, and Steve is left with only a faint ring in his right ear and the throb of his shoulder. 

“Is that all you’ve got?” Steve demands, perhaps a touch dizzily, and raises his fists up in challenge. 

“Oh, here we go,” says Horace. 

  
  


Steve is halfway through taking the clothes off the line when Bucky gets home that night. His shoulder aches as he drags the line along the pulley, but it’s a tolerable pain. He’s just unclipping a cheesecloth bag full of undergarments when he hears the door swing open. 

“Bad news, Steve,” Bucky announces as he comes in the door. “We can’t buy any produce for the next week.” 

“Well there goes my Sunday apple pie,” Steve says. 

He hears Bucky clomp past him, the sound of his bag landing on the table, followed by the sound of boots being kicked off. 

“Rats?” Steve asks, as he pulls the line toward him. 

“I was kickin’ ‘em off those crates all day long. Benny accidentally squished one to death when it didn’t move out of the way fast enough.” 

Steve makes a face at that mental image, and his split lip twinges in retribution.

"The tomatoes smelled more like rat piss than pizza sauce, swear to God,” Bucky continues. “I’ve ain’t never seen a ship that infested before. I’m gonna have nightmares for _days_.” 

“Ew,” Steve mouths, and unpins a shirt from the line, tucks the clothespin between his teeth, and then grabs the other one. He shakes out the shirt, grabs the tips, and then neatly folds it and turns to quickly place it in the basket. 

“We also had a whole ship’a…" 

He stops. 

Steve grimaces at the shirt before looking up to meet Bucky’s gaze. 

Bucky’s got both suspenders of his coveralls down and a scowl that rivals his mother’s. 

“What the hell happened to your face?” Bucky demands. 

“What do _you_ think?” Steve asks, and leans out the window again to pull in the next piece of clothing. 

“What kinda answer is that?” 

Steve pulls a pair of pants off the line, tosses the pins in the basket, and starts to fold them. 

“Christ,” Bucky sighs. “At least tell me the other guy looks worse.” 

Steve snorts. "Yeah. Wish I could. I went down to the Geneva on Plymouth this morning, and these two Betas—" 

Bucky groans. "I _told_ you that was a bad idea." 

"I have the right—" 

"To waste your time? Get beat up for no reason?"

Steve scowls. "I _have the right_ to stand in line for a job, just like everyone else." 

Bucky brings a hand up to scrub at his face, and sits down in a chair at the table. "Steve. You know I agree with the idea, you _know_ I think you should be able to get work just like an Alpha or a Beta, but the fact is that—" 

"I deserve to get chucked out of line by middle-aged Betas like an actual _sack of trash?"_

Bucky drops his hand and gives him a flat look. "Steve." 

"Nothing is ever going to change if we just let this shit slide again and again," Steve says, absolutely resolute in this.

Bucky groans. "Well, does it have to be during the greatest economic downturn the United States has ever seen?" 

"Yes," says Steve. 

"We need _money._ ” 

“We’d have it if Omegas got fair employment.” 

“But they don’t.” 

“If I sit in that employment line enough times, _someone’s_ gonna give me a job.” 

They’ve had this argument approximately a dozen times already. 

Bucky presses his hands to his temples. “Or you’ll get beat up and _killed_. You can’t keep doing this, Steve.” 

“So I’ve gotta be stuck doing fucking laundry for the rest of my life?” Steve demands, gesturing at the baskets of clothes before him. “Begging the neighbors for the chance to do their chores every week?” 

“And you think I love haulin’ crates of rotten apples up and down the docks all fuckin’ day?” Bucky snaps. “This ain’t exactly the age of dreams, here.”

“At least you get paid fair wages!” 

“We’re lucky you’re getting any fuckin’ wages at all, and you know it,” Bucky says. 

Steve bites his tongue, because this is where the argument has historically taken a turn for the worse, and as much as he wants to fling out accusations like _You don’t understand because you’re not an Omega_ , after so many iterations of this fight, part of him does acknowledge that Bucky… has a point.

Bucky is practical where Steve is not, in matters like this, and whether it’s his status as an Alpha that affords him the ability to stay pragmatic in the face of injustice—they _are_ lucky. They live near multiple families who have the spare income to pay someone else to do the washing. Their apartment has a relatively generous laundry line, and it isn’t next to anything like a smokeshop or a trash heap. And Steve had had his mother to teach him how to do laundry properly; how to starch in a double boiler, that if you pin a dress by its hem it will fly away in the breeze, to soak a handkerchief in salt water for twenty minutes before washing to get rid of the worst of the filth. 

The income isn’t much, but it’s more than most Omegas will ever have. 

Steve slumps down into a chair across from Bucky and stares, annoyed. 

"Hey," Bucky says, "let's walk through the fight, see if we can figure out what went wrong. You said it was two Betas?"

Steve glares. 

Bucky, no doubt exhausted after ten hours of humping crates up and down a pier, gamely stands and gestures at Steve, _come on, up, up, up._

"The laundry isn't all off the line." 

"It could use fifteen more minutes anyway," says Bucky, without even looking toward the window. He grabs Steve’s arm and pulls. “Come on, c’mere.” 

Steve exhales, but allows himself to be dragged to his feet. 

“C’mere,” Bucky murmurs, and pulls him in close. 

Steve resists for approximately half a second, before he folds like a house of cards and leans against Bucky’s broad chest. He inhales deeply, the familiar Alpha scent settling something deep inside of him, and rubs his forehead against the base of Bucky’s neck, reveling in the way the bridge of his nose always slots just against the hollow of Bucky’s throat. He remembers growing up, how their hugs had changed over the years, how they had clashed chins and collarbones and elbows and ears and thinks that God knew what he was doing when he finally stopped them both growing right where they are, because their bodies slot together so perfectly like this. 

Bucky’s face presses against the top of his head, and he inhales deeply. 

“Love the way you smell, baby,” he murmurs. 

Steve smiles a little in spite of himself. “Later,” he says, and wriggles a little against Bucky’s arms. “C’mon. You promised me a fight.” 

Bucky sighs, drops a kiss to his head, and lets him go.

"There were two Betas," Steve confirms, tugging Bucky over to the open space that would be their sitting room, if they had any furniture like a couch or armchairs. Last time they did this, Bucky jokingly called it their discount boxing gym.. "That arm-roll trick worked the first time one of them grabbed my arm, but the second time they got me and I couldn't get out of it. And then one of them grabbed me by my goddamn _hair._ " 

"Show me," Bucky says. 

  
  


That night in bed, Steve is drifting off with Bucky burrowed up behind him, good ear pressed to the pillow (it keeps him pleasantly deaf to Bucky’s snoring every night), when he feels a finger start tracing over his back. 

His mouth pulls into a smile, and he starts paying attention to what Bucky is writing. 

H-U-R-T-S-?

“Nah,” Steve says, which is only partly a lie. He’s lying on his injured shoulder, but better that than being woken up all night by the wood chipper he sleeps next to. 

S-O-R-R-Y

Steve exhales. “It’s fine.” 

Bucky nuzzles the back of his neck and presses a kiss there. 

Steve wishes he could explain—really, properly explain—what it feels like to get thrown out on your ass while a dozen other people watch impassively. How the humiliation burns in your throat. How _alone_ you really are. 

Growing up, Steve remembers his Ma had always been so excited about the future. Back then, it had seemed like suffrage was only the beginning for Omegas—next, they were getting jobs, using birth control, divorcing and _keeping their kids._ She used to keep a whole drawer of the pamphlets from the National Omega Party, would buy any newspaper that mentioned Alice Paul, would hold him close at night and say, _T_ _he world’s getting ready for us, a leanbh._

But all that had died when Steve was eleven years old and the stock market crashed. 

Between his shoulderblades, three familiar symbols are being drawn onto his back, over and over again. 

  
  


Steve comes to their front door gasping, hating August, and hating their top-floor apartment. The mail is clutched in his fist. He takes a couple of breaths, waiting for his heartbeat to slow, waiting for his lungs to open up. He breathes in, and out, and in, and out, and checks the mail while he's waiting. The fourth letter catches his eye, and he goes ahead and opens it. 

When he can breathe properly, he opens the door to the apartment, which smells like fried cabbage. 

"Hey, dollface," Bucky calls from the kitchen. 

"Hello, Mr. Bumes." 

Bucky turns around, giving him a weird look. 

Steve gives him a stony expression in return and waves the letter, dropping the rest to the table. He coughs, and says, "Letter for Mr. James B. Bumes." 

"Must be a mistake," Bucky says, frowning, coming over to look. 

Steve shakes his head, and hands him the contents: a single, heavy piece of cardstock, the seal of New York State at the top right corner. 

"Oh, our marriage certificate! Only took 'em seven months, not bad." 

"Buck, look at your name." 

Bucky does. 

"I _told_ you to let me fill out the form," Steve says, crossing his arms. "I told you they wouldn't be able to read your fuckin’ chicken scratch handwriting, I _told_ you they'd get something wrong, and now _our legal name is Bumes."_

Bucky cracks up. 

Steve swats him on the shoulder. "It's not funny! This isn't like when I come home with chives instead of olives because you can't write a goddamn legible grocery list, this is our legal last name!" 

"Yes, Mrs. Bumes," Bucky says innocently, which gets him another swat. 

"I'm filling out the form this time," Steve says, and coughs again. "I don't care that technically only Alphas can fill it out, they're going to make an exception—" He breaks off, coughing again. 

"Do we need to break out the Haywood's?" Bucky asks, raising an eyebrow.

Steve inhales wheezily, and shakes his head. "Don't change the—" Cough. "—subject, asshole." 

"I think Mrs. Bumes could use some Haywood's," Bucky disagrees, turning back to the kitchen and going for the left cupboard where the medicines are. 

"I think Mr. Bumes—" Cough. "—could use some fucking—" Cough. "—penmanship lessons—" 

Bucky's already shaking the asthma powder into a pot. 

Steve scowls, wheezes out another breath, coughs, and sits down in the chair so he can lean forward with his elbows on his knees, easing his lungs just a bit. He counts up from one to seven on the inhale, and back down to one on the exhale, over and over, just like Ma had taught him.

Fried cabbage always gets to him, no matter how many windows they leave open. 

"For the record," Bucky says from the stove, "I still don't know why the fuck you thought we would need chives. What are we, middle class?"

Steve flips him off. 

  
  


They've been mated for almost a year when Steve finally gets a heat. His heats are pathetic things, a mockery of what he knows other Omegas go through, for no clear reason other than "constitutional deficiency", but in the end it’s enough to get Bucky into a rut as well. Bucky barely has time to run out for condoms and provisions before they hole up for the meager twenty two hours that constitute Steve's heat—and then the three additional days in which Bucky is a glazed-eyed, grunting, greedy, rutting Alpha, and Steve uses almost a whole jar of lubricant helping Bucky along. 

Afterward, Steve disappears into the bathroom with a Lysol douche and adds a layer of chemical contraception, which leaves him considerably more sore than the packaging had promised. ("Gentle, non-caustic, will not harm delicate tissue," Steve recites sourly as he wiggles in his chair for the millionth time, anything to relieve the feeling of his anus burning through his underpants.) 

But it works, and Steve does not get pregnant. 

  
  


Steve and Bucky wedge together on the walk to the Barnes’, Alice bundled between them. Becca and Grace are behind them, lagging a bit because Grace keeps stopping to kick icicles off the fire hydrants. It's not really snowing, so much as the wind is vicious enough to be ripping up snow drifts and creating tornadoes of blistering white. It’s been a brutal winter this year.

Mr. and Mrs. Barnes had gone east instead of south after church, en route to Bushwick where Bucky's Great Uncle Thomas is laid up in the hospital with pneumonia. Steve and Bucky aren’t really babysitting for the day, per se, but keeping Becca company. 

The Barnes’ also live closer to church than Bucky and Steve do, so at least the walk is shorter. Steve coughs every so often, and wills his lungs not to seize up in the cold. Bucky keeps glancing over at him worriedly. 

Steve walks faster.

The rush of heat once they get inside is a welcome relief, and Steve feels his lungs relax almost immediately. He clomps up the stairs with everyone else, uses Grace as an excuse to lag behind a bit, but is only wheezing slightly by the time he gets to the third floor. Just outside the door is a block of old wood that Mr. Barnes had nailed to an upside down scrub brush, and they each take turns cleaning off the bottoms of their boots so they don’t track mud on the carpets. By the time he steps foot into the apartment, Steve is breathing easy. 

He sheds his layers rapidly before the snow can start melting into his clothes, and throws them onto the growing heap on the floor next to the coat rack. His boots come off next, and then he carefully picks his socked feet across the puddled entryway over to where Bucky stands. 

"Mr. Bumes," he prompts, holding out his key and tilting his chin up. 

"It would be my pleasure, Mrs. Bumes," Bucky replies, taking the key.

Becca laughs as she hangs up her coat. “It’s not a real Sunday if Mom’s not here to moan about you taking off your collar as soon as possible.” 

Bucky rolls his eyes, and unlocks Steve’s collar. 

" _You know, when I was a girl,_ ” Becca mimics, in a high voice that sounds nothing like Mrs. Barnes, “ _you never saw an Omega without their collar_.” 

"Well, I do just look so _lovely_ in it,” Steve says darkly, and Bucky laughs. 

"Imagine if Mom knew that sometimes if we go straight back to our place after church, you take off your _own_ collar," Bucky says. 

"She'd be so sad," Becca says sympathetically. 

“I think it's nice!" Alice protests. "When I get married, _I_ want a collar." 

"You just want an Alpha to spend a lot of money on you," Becca teases. 

"I do not!" 

Bucky snorts. 

"A collar means your Alpha loves you and wants to keep you forever," Alice says staunchly. "It's proof that they can provide for you." 

"Yeah, well, that doesn't mean I want to wear it all the time," Steve says, taking the collar that Bucky hands him with the accompanying key. 

"But what if you had a collar like Muriel Vanderbilt's, huh? I bet you'd wear that every single day," Alice says. 

"What, pure gold?" 

" _Eight chains_ of gold," Alice sighs dreamily. "All braided together, and the lock is heart-shaped, and it’s got diamonds everywhere. It was custom made by DeBeers!" 

"I don't think heart-shaped is really my style," Steve says drily. 

"But gold and diamonds are?" Bucky asks. 

"Steve, you married the wrong Alpha," Becca cackles. 

"I like my collar just fine," Steve interjects, and leans up to press a quick kiss to Bucky’s mouth. “I’d probably be allergic to gold anyway.” 

Alice rolls her eyes. “You guys are dumb,” she announces, and flounces off to the kitchen. 

“Who knows,” Bucky says consideringly. “Maybe by the time she gets mated, Betas will be getting collars, too.” 

“Jack says over in Europe, Betas are getting each other rings,” Becca tells them. “They wear them on the same finger, and not just for dressing up—all the time!” 

“And they _both_ wear rings?” Steve asks. 

“That’s what Jack said.” 

Bucky looks down at his hands, turning them over and flexing his fingers. “Feels like it’d get in the way. Or fall off.” 

“On the upside, you’d look a lot less like cattle,” Steve says. 

“Becca!” Grace hollers from the kitchen. “There’s no carrots!” 

“That’s ‘cause we didn’t buy any!” Becca shouts back, and starts toward the kitchen. “Or chicken, either. No big Sunday dinner today, you know none of us can cook.”

“Bucky can cook,” Steve says loyally, following her in. 

“Only compared to you and me,” Becca replies. 

“What’s for lunch, then?” Alice asks suspiciously. 

Becca pulls down the peanut butter and the mayonnaise. “Sandwiches?” 

There’s a round of groans in reply.

“Hey, come on guys. Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or—” 

“ _Stoooooop_ ,” Alice moans. 

  
  


After some discussion, Bucky agrees to make chop suey, and Steve and Becca sit around and provide moral support. Steve’s pretty excited to be eating beef for a change, instead of hotdogs and bologna. Becca claims that real chop suey doesn’t use hamburger meat at all. 

“Then what does it have?” Bucky asks, opening a can of tomatoes. 

“I dunno,” Becca says, her knowledge on the subject apparently beginning and ending with only that factoid. “Not hamburger. Anyway, Steve, what’s up with the black eye?” 

Bucky sighs. 

“There was a protest at the pencil factory,” Steve says staunchly. “The women there are paid almost nothing compared to the men, even though it’s almost an all-Beta workforce.” 

Becca squints at him. “Since when do you care about… Beta women?”

“All people deserve fair pay,” Steve says. 

“ _Steve_ has discovered that protests give him a good excuse to get into fistfights, and get cheered on for his trouble,” Bucky interjects. 

Steve glares. “The women are getting paid a quarter of what the men get. How is that not a problem? They do the same _job_.” 

“They sent him home with half a chess pie,” Bucky tells Becca in an undertone. 

“They were nice people!” Steve protests. 

“Mm,” says Bucky, and dumps macaroni noodles into a pot of boiling water. 

“You guys heard about that sit-down strike over in Michigan, right?” Becca asks. “Two thousand people occupying the auto plant for a month straight, can you imagine?” 

“They wanted to unionize, right?” 

“Yeah. And they got it, in the end. It was in the Times just last week.” 

“You know, the docks really oughta unionize,” Steve tells Bucky, looking thoughtful. 

“Steve, _no_ ,” Bucky groans. 

“They should! Look at how they treat you—no breaks, no schedule ahead of time, and when was the last time you got a raise?” 

“And you complain all the time about how unsafe everything is,” Becca adds. “Like last week, when that woman almost died because the gangplank rail had rusted through on one side?” 

“Guys, there’s probably thousands of dock workers, and they’re all contracted to different companies, and most of them don’t even speak _English_ ,” Bucky says, shaking his head. “It’d never work.” 

“Bet they said the same thing in Michigan,” Steve replies. 

“You know who just got unionized a few months ago? The sugar factory—the big one, Domino,” Becca says. “I know a girl who works there; she could help.” 

“One,” Bucky says, jabbing a wooden spoon at them, “I am not going to start an uprising at work, I’m lucky to have a job at _all_ —” 

“That’s what companies _want_ you to think—”

“Steve, shut up. Number two, Becca, that girl you know is Susan Sanders and you and I both know there’s something not right about her.” 

Becca glares. “Susan Sanders is perfectly nice. She’s just a little....”

“She’s queer as three dollar bill,” Steve puts in. 

“She is _not_ ,” Becca snaps. 

“Heard she was,” Bucky agrees. “Her and Jacob Edelstein both, they got mated as a cover. I mean, why else would a Beta marry an Omega?” 

“Maybe they’re in love!” 

“Have you seen them together? They don’t even touch.” 

“They’re—reserved,” Becca tries. 

“Queer,” Steve says. 

“Well, so what if they are?” Becca demands. “There’s nothing wrong with it, if you ask me. They’re not hurting anyone.”

Bucky shrugs. “Suppose so. Still weird, a Beta and an Omega.” 

“It _happens_ ,” Becca says, scowling. “Don’t be such a pig.” 

This time, Bucky grins. “Hey, Steve, remember when Becca was convinced that you oughta be wearin’ dresses?” 

“That is _not_ what I said,” Becca says hotly. 

“You said that if dresses were supposed to make people look all dainty and pretty, then lady Alphas oughta be wearin’ trousers, and the Omega fellas oughta wear the dresses,” Bucky says. 

“I _said_ that it’s no wonder that no one respects female Alphas when we’re still expected to wear dresses all the time, even though we’re _just the same_ as male Alphas.”

“Yeah, and then you said, ‘Even male Omegas get to wear trousers, and if anyone should be wearing dresses, it’s them’.”

“Because the whole _point_ of a dress is—” 

“Is any of this not what I originally said?” Bucky asks, turning to Steve. 

“Jack agrees with me,” Becca cuts in, crossing her arms over her chest. “He thinks anyone should be able to wear whatever they want.” 

“Becca, geeze, if you want to wear trousers so bad, just wear ‘em,” Bucky says. 

“Bucky, let me tell you a secret,” Becca says, leaning across the counter. “ _All_ girls wanna wear trousers.” 

Bucky throws his hands up. “Then let ‘em wear trousers. Let Steve wear dresses. What do I care?”

“Why is Steve wearing dresses?” Alice asks, wandering into the kitchen with a book in hand.

“Because Becca’s wearing trousers,” Bucky replies. 

“ _Steve_ doesn’t want to wear dresses,” says Steve, and Becca giggles. 

“You guys are so _weird_ ,” Alice declares, wrinkling her nose. “What’s for lunch?” 

  
  
  


Springtime brings a slight respite, after Bucky’s job at the docks ends up getting unionized (Steve and Becca were both very enthusiastic participants in the strike), and it brings them just enough money that they don’t have to sit down every Sunday night and calculate down to the penny how much money will be left for food that week. Steve applies to the nursing school at St. Catherine’s Hospital, which only just began to accept Omegas last semester. They go to actual Dodgers games instead of just listening on the radio, and they acquire a couch, and they eat meat more than once a week. 

So when Steve ends up catching a second heat in the same year, they’re both taken by surprise. Bucky has to sprint to the pharmacy five minutes before close to get condoms, and their experiment with dandelion salad wilts to death in the kitchen over the next day and a half while Bucky fucks Steve up and down the apartment. Afterward, Steve tries Marvel Swirling Spray instead of the Lysol, without much difference in results. 

Except for one thing. 

“Check again,” Steve demands. 

“I’m not checking again! I’ve known you for ten years, sweetheart, I know what you smell like, and I’m telling you, it’s _different_.” 

“Maybe I’m sick?” Steve tries. 

“Maybe you’re pregnant,” Bucky replies. 

Steve shakes his head. “Bucky, that’s impossible.” 

“Yeah, well, so was you surviving the winter of twenty-eight, and all that happened was Father McGinley got some free practice with his Last Rites.” Bucky raises his eyebrows. “ _Twice_.” 

“There’s no way,” Steve says. Insists. This has been a fact of life for him for as long as he can remember, a tagline to every doctor’s visit, never as important as his asthma or his weak heart or his spine growing in crooked, but always a point to mention in an undertone to his mother. _Constitutionally barren_. 

“There’s no way,” he repeats. 

But the next day, Bucky claims the scent is still there. And the day after that. And the day after that. Steve learns in nursing school that over in Europe, the wealthy can mail in a sample of their urine and scientists will inject it into a frog, and if the frog lays eggs that day, it means the person is pregnant. He thinks about that in the late hours of the night, staring at the ceiling while Bucky sleeps soundly, curled close. What he would pay to _know_. 

And then comes the nausea. And the vomiting. 

“So you might have been right,” Steve admits, after the third week passes and he’s still throwing up half his meals. 

“Oh, are you sure?” Bucky asks, heavy with sarcasm. “You don’t want to stick with the ‘really bad stomach flu’ theory for a few more weeks?” 

“I hate you,” Steve says, and pushes the trash can away. He turns in his chair and slumps over the table, head in his hands. “Oh, shit.”

Pregnant. 

He can’t even count how many different ways this was _never supposed to happen_. 

Steve’s brain is trying to subtract another hungry mouth from Bucky’s paycheck and coming up with negative numbers. They’re going to starve. He’s thinking about the fifty dollars they spent— _wasted_ on tuition for him at St. Catherine’s, because no one’s going to want to hire a pregnant Omega—and a future of begging to do his neighbors’ laundry for whatever pocket change they can spare, day in and day out, washing and wringing and hanging and mending and— 

He thinks about trying to do it all with a baby on his hip. 

Bucky presses up next to him out of nowhere, and Steve jumps, swearing. 

“—orry, sorry,” Bucky is apologizing hastily, when Steve turns his head to glare at him. “Sorry, I thought you’d hear me!” 

At some point, Bucky had dragged his chair right next to Steve’s, and he’s not wrong—Steve’s left ear may be non-functional but he should have heard _that_. 

Steve lets the scowl fall away, and reluctantly allows their shoulders to brush together as he lets his body relax again. Bucky takes this as permission to start rubbing Steve’s back, his large hand running comfortingly over the crooked line of knobs that is his spine.

“Hey,” Bucky says, after it’s been quiet for some time. “Listen. I know there’s… I mean, it’s not too late for... other options.” 

Steve knows. 

Ms. Fiorentino and her ‘knitting needles’ are the worst kept secret in DUMBO. 

“We can’t—do that,” Steve says, but his voice is too shaky to be even slightly convincing. 

Bucky's hand falls away from his back. "Well, we either do that, or we have a baby," he says.

“ _No kidding_.” 

Bucky snorts, and Steve’s scowl is back. “Jesus, it’s not funny, Buck. This is—this could _destroy_ us.” 

“It’s a baby, Steve, not a bomb.” 

“A bomb would be cheaper!” 

“But babies are cuter,” Bucky argues. 

“ _Bucky_."

Bucky grins. “This is what happens when you live in denial for a month. I went through all this _weeks_ ago.” 

“Well, great,” Steve snaps, hunching his shoulders and crossing his arms over his chest. “Good for you. I’ll just be over here catching up on the fact that I’m somehow pregnant, don’t let me spoil your Saturday or anything.” 

"I hope the baby inherits your sense of melodrama," Bucky says blandly. 

“I hope you still think this is funny when the baby is starving to death because we don’t have enough money for fucking _food_ ,” Steve retorts. 

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I swear to God, Steve. You know we would never—”

Steve, done with this conversation, tips his chin into his right hand, and presses his fingers down over his right ear. 

The world goes pleasantly silent. 

Steve doesn't even have to lip read to get the _Oh, that's real mature, Steve_ , from Bucky. His expression says it all.

Steve stares back stonily, until finally Bucky gets up and goes back to the dishes he'd abandoned when Steve had started vomiting up his breakfast.

  
  


At night, Steve still stares up at the ceiling. He splays a hand over his concave stomach and remembers growing up hungry, remembers sleeping against the sharp curve of Ma's hip, and layering newspapers between the blankets to add warmth. He remembers her smell, her soft skin, and the songs she used to hum while she stroked his hair. He wonders if Ma ever regretted getting pregnant _(staying pregnant)_ before sending her Alpha off to war.

He thinks of Father McGinley at the pulpit, and a table with stirrups and straps, a knitting needle sterilized in a kerosene flame, and the diagram from his nursing textbook of Omega reproductive anatomy. 

He doesn’t think he’s brave enough to choose an abortion. 

He’d never thought he’d be in a position where there’d ever be something to _abort_.

 _Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without_ , the motto of The Great War that Steve was raised on, that his body was _built_ on, now repurposed for America to survive this never-ending depression. He’s an expert at doing without. This had just been one more item on a long, long list of things he'd told himself he’d never have. 

But now… here they are. A baby. 

Of course, he thinks, not every pregnancy ends in a baby. 

Sometimes something happens, in the womb, something goes wrong in those early months and the body purges itself before a baby can completely form. No abortion, and no baby. 

A... solution, maybe. 

Steve rolls over and wraps his arms around Bucky, pressing his face into his shoulder and banishing the thought. 

  
  


It’s been a week and Steve is aware that he’s not doing well. 

Bucky elbows him excitedly every time they pass a baby in the street, and in the space of seven days he tries twice to drag Steve into Woolworth’s to look at baby clothes. He cleans the whole apartment from top to bottom, reorganizes the kitchen, and finally repairs the left bedroom window so it opens all the way. He drops off to sleep instantly every night, probably dreaming about a tow-headed toddler taking its first steps in this very apartment. 

Steve lies next to him and stares at the painted tin ceiling. When he sleeps, he dreams of empty cupboards and a baby crying, endlessly. 

On Saturday, Steve and Bucky are on the couch because it’s the only place in the apartment to sit—every other available surface is covered in drying laundry, since it’s been downpouring for three days straight. Steve is studying from _A Textbook of Medical Diseases for Nurses_ , and Bucky is nose-deep in a book he’d just picked up from the library. It contains a great deal about pregnancy and babies, from which Bucky has been reading aloud the highlights. 

"Hey Steve, check it out," Bucky says, angling the book toward him. "According to this, if we count from the first day of your heat, you're due February 5th."

"Great," Steve says, carefully copying down signs and symptoms of lockjaw.

Bucky drops the book, and turns to look at him. "Steve." 

Steve dredges up a smile. "No, it's nice. A February baby. The same month as your dad." 

Bucky looks at him, and Steve looks back. 

“Steve,” Bucky says. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Steve says.

"Exactly how dumb do you think I am, Rogers?" 

"I'm not lying," Steve snaps. 

"I _know you_." 

“Please just drop it.” 

“Will you just tell me what’s wrong?” 

“ _Drop it_.” 

“Steve, just tell me—” 

“Tell you _what?_ That maybe I’m just a little tired of hearing about babies every _five fucking minutes?_ ” Steve explodes. “Is that what you want to hear? Huh?” 

Bucky shrinks back from him, just a little, hurt flashing across his face. 

Steve immediately regrets it. “Shit,” he says. “Shit, Bucky. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.” 

“You did,” Bucky says. 

“No, I didn’t, I promise,” Steve says desperately. “It’s just—it’s just a lot of stress, right now. I’m just really stressed.”

Bucky takes in a deep breath, visibly bracing himself. “Look me in the eye, and tell me you want this baby, Steve.” 

Steve swallows, and looks Bucky straight in the eye. He swallows again. His mouth opens, but he can’t lie, not about this. 

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky says. 

“This isn’t fair,” Steve says immediately. “This isn’t—Bucky, I don’t _not_ want it.” 

“You want an abortion?” 

“ _No_ ,” Steve says emphatically. 

“Because Mrs. Fiorentino—” 

“I don’t want an abortion!” 

“Well, what _do_ you want?” 

Steve feels misery rising in his chest, and he pushes it down viciously. “I wanna not _starve_.” 

Bucky exhales, running a hand through his hair. “This shit? Still? Steve, we’re not gonna starve to death if we have a baby.” 

“You know the numbers, just like I do,” Steve says tightly. “We sit at that damn table every Sunday night and make sure we’re gonna have enough pennies to get us through the week, and you think we can just—you think a baby is _cheap?_ ” 

“We’d make it _work_ ,” Bucky argues. 

““You don’t get it,” Steve says, shaking his head. “You don’t—Bucky, you didn’t grow up like I did, you don’t know what it’s like to go to bed hungry every night. You can’t just say ‘we’ll make it work’ and hope for the best, because we’re already trying our fucking best and we barely get by! Just because we want a baby doesn’t mean we should _have one_.” 

“My parents would never let us starve.” 

"I don’t want to rely on your parents!” 

“Always your goddamn _pride_ , I swear to God, Steve—” 

“It’s not pride! We got married because your parents couldn’t afford to feed us anymore, I’m sorry if I don’t want to come back to them and beg for money.” 

“I married you because I _love_ you,” Bucky says, wide-eyed and wounded. 

Steve grits his teeth. “I love you, too, but we both know that if we could have waited, we would have. And now look where we are. I’m nineteen and pregnant and we _have no money_.” 

Steve’s words hang in the air for an awful minute. 

“Fine,” Bucky snaps, throwing his hands up. “Fine. If you’re that worried about it, go get an abortion. You know the address.” 

Steve’s breath hitches in his throat. “I _can’t_.” 

“It’s pretty simple, Steve. We either have a baby, or we don’t have a baby. I can’t make a third option for you.” 

“Bucky, we—we can’t,” Steve says. His eyes are starting to prickle with tears, and he can feel his throat closing up, and he hates himself for it. “We _can’t._ ”

“Yeah, well, we _can_ , and we _will_ , unless you decide to do something about it. I don’t know what else you want me to say.” 

Steve shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he chokes out. 

Bucky leverages himself up off the couch. “Well, let me know when you do.” 

“Bucky,” Steve says, but Bucky strides across the kitchen and into the bedroom, and slams the door shut behind him. 

Have an abortion, or have a baby. 

Bucky always was the pragmatist. 

  
  


Two days later, Bucky comes home from work and finds Steve sitting on the floor just outside their bathroom in only a shirt and underwear, arms wrapped about his knees. The apartment is still adorned with damp clothing, because the rain has yet to let up. 

“You can probably spare one chair to sit on, dollface,” Bucky says. 

"I'm bleeding," Steve replies. He stares at the wall.

He hears more than sees Bucky stop moving. 

"Something—" Steve stops, and swallows. Forces himself to say it. "Something came out." 

"Steve," Bucky breathes. His bag hits the floor. 

"But there's still bleeding," Steve says tonelessly, "and I didn't want to—stain anything."

"Steve," Bucky says again, like he can't say anything else. 

Steve turns to look at him, and whatever else he might have said dies on his tongue when he sees the look on Bucky's face. 

  
  


Bucky pulls Steve off the floor and into the bathroom. Strips him down. Steve looks down and sees blood running down his thighs, and almost tips over with the overwhelming sensation that _those aren’t his legs._

Bucky wrestles him into the tub in silence, starts running the water and strips down to his own underwear before he grabs a washcloth. 

Steve watches his own blood run down to the drain. Barely feels the rough pass of the wet cloth over his legs. 

“At least now I don’t need an abortion,” Steve says numbly. 

Bucky flinches back like he’s been slapped. 

Steve’s breath hitches, and it suddenly hits him that their baby is gone. It’s _gone._ There’s not going to be a tiny perfect infant in his arms on February 5th with brown hair and blue eyes, no baptism, no first steps, no miniature socks and shirts on the laundry line—

Nothing.

There will be _nothing_. 

The heat rises in his throat and he tries to force it back down because he’s got no right, _no right_ —he brings his hand up and bites down on his own fist, tells himself he doesn’t _deserve_ to feel this— 

“Steve.” 

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out. The tears spill over, and he feels something inside of him break. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m _sorry_.” 

“It’s okay,” Bucky says softly. “It’s okay, Steve.”

Steve shakes his head and keens, long and low.

And then there’s a warm, strong body slotting into place behind him, familiar arms around him, slotting him into place between his legs heedless of the ice cold water or the river of blood. 

“It’s okay, I know, it’s okay,” Bucky murmurs into his good ear, holding Steve tightly. 

“I didn’t—mean it,” Steve sobs. 

“I know you didn’t. It’s okay, Steve, it’s okay.” 

Steve gasps for air. His chest feels like it’s being ripped open. “It’s my fault.” 

“Shh, no, it’s not.” 

“I want it _back_ ,” Steve says, helplessly. 

Behind him, he feels Bucky’s chest jerk against his back once, twice, three times. Bucky’s crying. Steve grips the arms circling him and holds on tight, feels Bucky’s forehead pressing down on his shoulder, and they rock together in the tub, grieving. 

  
  


They lay in bed that night, as they always do, with Steve on his right side to silence the world and Bucky curled up behind him. Between their bodies, Bucky draws out a familiar series of lines on Steve’s back, ones he’s traced a thousand times over, in the dark of night and the golden glow of lazy mornings, letters that might as well be tattooed onto Steve’s back at this point. 

_I ❤ U_


	2. 1943 Part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I must admit that the idea for how Steve gets the serum in this 'verse was pretty directly inspired by rageprofrock's far superior fic [Reconstruction](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1564184), which you should all go read right now. All credit for the idea goes to them.
> 
> On another note, editing is progressing very well, and as soon as I have everything done, I'll probably be switching to twice weekly updates. Yay!

When Bucky gets deployed, the key to Steve's collar hangs from the same chain as his dog tags. Steve presses a piece of expensive drawing paper over them, and skims a pencil over the bumps and ridges until the text is copied over in graphite forever. 

_JAMES B BARNES A  
32557038 T42 43 O _

_C_

Used to be that dog tags would also have the name and address of the next of kin, too, but maybe that got to be too expensive, because now it’s only Bucky’s name on the tag. Instead, they pay a jeweler to engrave Steve’s information on the key, and Bucky jokes that it ought to be _S Bumes_ instead, or any mail the Army sends will be returned as undeliverable. 

Watching Bucky leave is one of the hardest things Steve has ever done. But where other mates are weeping into handkerchiefs, Steve’s fists are clenched at his sides and his jaw is set, and if Bucky had looked back he would have known that there was trouble on the horizon. 

  
  


Steve has always thought that if he’d been born two decades earlier, he’d have made an excellent suffragette. As it is, Omegas have had the right to vote for the last twenty-four years, so instead here he is, trying to sneak into the Army. 

Again. 

He takes the train to Queens, to the same place where he and Bucky had been only a few nights ago for the Stark Expo, applies an extra coat of the scent-blocker a street away, and heads through the intake door with his shoulders set confidently. 

“Steven Rogers, for the Nursing Corps,” he tells the man at the front desk, just as he’d practiced on the subway. 

The man jerks a thumb toward the door on the right. 

Steve grips his papers, and enters. 

An hour later, he’s called back to an exam room. He is measured and weighed, and then left alone for exactly enough time to apply another coat of scent-blocker, before a tall woman enters the room with a clipboard. She’s dressed in a freshly starched, pure white nursing uniform, complete with cap. This is not a nurse who spends her days scrubbing bedpans. 

“Steven Rogers?” she asks. 

He nods. “Yes, ma’am.” 

“Born August 8th, 1918, Beta male,” she reads. “Unmated. Licensed nurse with St. Salvator’s Hospital since 1940, after graduating from their nursing school. You have a letter here from a Dr. Lehmann certifying that you are in good health, with no medical problems. Is that correct?” 

“Yes, ma’am,” Steve says. 

She hums, and writes something down. There’s a crease in her brow that makes him nervous. 

“I’ll need to perform my own exam as well,” she states, setting the clipboard to the side and pulling a stethoscope from nowhere. 

“Sure,” Steve says, his stomach falling. 

The physical exam does not go well. His racing heart might cover up the arrhythmia, but he coughs too much when she listens to his lungs, she traces two deft fingers down his crooked spine, and he catches her frown when she sees the way his skin stretches over his ribs, thin and delicate. Worst of all, after she’s finished palpating his thyroid, he sees her freeze when her hand goes past her face, and a second later her nostrils flare. 

She blinks at him, her professional demeanor broken for only seconds, but long enough for Steve to know with certain dread that the new scent-blocker he’d picked up had not been effective enough. 

“Excuse me,” she says, grabbing her clipboard. Her face has settled back into a practiced blank expression, except her eyes are too hard, her mouth too pinched. "Just wait here.” 

Steve watches her go with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. 

He doesn’t have to look behind him to read the sign that says _IT IS ILLEGAL TO FALSIFY YOUR ENLISTMENT FORM_. He saw it when he came in, and he hasn’t forgotten. He knew what he was doing when he came here. 

Steve slides off the exam table and pulls his pants back on, and is just jamming his shoes onto his feet when someone else enters. 

“So,” the man says, closing what is clearly Steve’s file. He’s older, a Beta, with a neatly groomed beard, and in particular stands out because he’s wearing a regular suit instead of any Army or nursing uniform. “You know Dr. Lehmann?” 

Oh. Oh, no. 

“Sorry?” Steve says, without much hope.

“Dr. Abraham Erskine,” the man says, holding out a hand. “I represent the Strategic Scientific Reserve.” 

Steve rises, and shakes the hand of the man who will take him into custody. “Steve Rogers,” he says.

He wonders if they’ll forward Bucky’s letters to whichever prison he ends up in. 

Dr. Erskine wanders over to the exam table, re-opens the file and starts paging through it. “As I was saying,” he continues, “you are acquainted with Dr. Lehmann?” 

Steve swallows. “Yes,” he says. 

“Curious,” Dr. Erskine says, “as last I knew, he was working at St. Catherine’s Hospital in Brooklyn, but I see here you work at St. Salvator’s. I must reach out to him and see why he changed positions.” 

“Maybe there are two different Dr. Lehmanns?” Steve suggests weakly. 

“Perhaps. But two with the exact same handwriting?” 

Steve doesn’t reply. 

“It was also very kind of him to write you another certificate of health, after you were denied admission to the Nursing Corps at Paramus, as well,” Dr. Erskine says calmly. “And Newark. And possibly others, since this driver’s license appears to be a well-crafted forgery.” 

Steve’s shoulder slump. 

Dr. Erskine looks over at him with raised eyebrows. “Tell me. What does an Omega want with the Army?” 

“To support the troops, just like anyone else,” Steve answers, setting his jaw. 

“There are easier ways than the military, my friend. There is scrap metal to collect, and victory gardens to plant, no?” 

“With all due respect, sir, I think assisting medics on the battlefield is a little more useful than pulling nails out of fenceposts,” Steve says, prickling with irritation. 

Dr. Erskine studies him silently. Eventually, he picks up the file and comes toward Steve. “Let us call the spades the spades, Mr. Rogers. Or is it?” 

“It… used to be,” Steve admits. “Barnes, now.”

“Very well. Mr. Barnes. Did Dr. Lehmann write this letter for you?” 

Steve exhales, and stares at the ground. “No. I did.” 

“It is a remarkable forgery.” 

Steve gives a huff of laughter, without looking up. “Well, I wrote a lotta lines after school, as a kid. I’m good with a pen.” 

“And you are actually a licensed nurse, in addition to your… artistic endeavors?” Dr. Erskine asks.

“Since 1940. Graduated from St. Catherine’s and never left.” Steve flushes a bit. “I’m not actually much of a liar—everything on the form is right except my name, gender, and the hospital I work at.” 

“And, I suspect, the certificate of health,” Dr. Erskine adds, looking almost amused. 

“If it didn’t stop me from working full-time at St. Catherine’s for three years, I don’t see why it should stop me from working in the Army,” Steve says, folding his arms over his chest. 

“I see,” Dr. Erskine says, and studies him again. 

Steve tries not to fidget, and wonders what the hell is going on. 

“Well, Mr. Barnes,” the doctor says at last, “your intentions are noble. But you know as well as I that the United States Army does not believe that Omegas have any role to play in war. And I’m afraid there is no scent blocker that you can buy which will fool the Army into believing you are a Beta.” 

Steve clenches his jaw. 

_Now_ is he going to be arrested?

“Do you know, though, that there is no law against Omegas being _contracted_ by the military?” Dr. Erskine asks. 

  
  


Dr. Erskine offers to hire him as an assistant. He has a large project that’s about to enter final testing stages, he says, and he needs someone else to hold down the regular lab tasks. Anyone with a nursing degree can certainly assist in a laboratory, he says. It’s better than collecting scrap metal, he says. 

So Steve says yes. 

_“Don’t do anything stupid ‘til I get back_ ,” Bucky had said. But then Bucky had sailed off to Europe on a warship, and Steve finds he doesn’t care nearly so much about keeping his promises when there’s an entire ocean of hypocrisy between them. 

Nothing is stupider than war. 

  
  


Steve’s new job is in a secret underground laboratory, hidden beneath _Brooklyn Antiques_ , a store that Steve has walked past countless times without ever realizing it was a front for the US government. There’s even a secret password. His actual job in the lab is not wholly dissimilar to his job at St. Catherine’s, except instead of washing backsides he’s washing beakers, and instead of babysitting cantankerous dementia patients, he’s babysitting the also rather cantankerous distillation apparatus. No one throws peas at him, though, which is a nice change.

By that third day, Steve has learned that Dr. Erskine is not only kind, but also that he eats an orange at least once a day, is a big fan of Helen Forrest, and that he is _obsessively_ dedicated to his work. Steve privately thinks that he’s either lost all his circadian rhythms after working in a windowless lab for so long, or he just lives in the building, or quite possibly both. Steve often finds tubes in the incubator with labeled start times in the wee hours of the morning, and he finishes for the day with an assurance that he can leave the water bath running, even on Friday evenings when sunset is nigh. 

“Shabbat is for prayer,” Dr. Erskine tells him pleasantly, when Steve asks if he should come in on Saturday to keep things running. “And not all prayers need come from the Torah. Enjoy your weekend, Mr. Barnes. I will see you on Monday.” 

  
  


Today, Dr. Erskine is spending the afternoon at an Army base over in Jersey, and Steve has been left in charge of a machine he doesn’t even know the name of. But he’s been told that when it goes ‘tweep’, he is to open it up, unload the vials into the rack inside the water bath, and then retrieve more vials from the fridge to undergo the same process. If the machine goes ‘bzzt’, he is to press the red button twice, and if it goes completely silent he’s to go to room 108-B and ask for Ed. 

Steve makes it approximately two hours before the machine goes completely silent, and he accordingly sets the graduated cylinder he was washing back in the sink, double-checks that the machine is indeed dead (it is), flicks the on/off switch a few times hopefully anyway, and when that fails he goes in search of room 108-B. 

What he finds, when he cracks open the door to 108-B, is an assemblage of people around a chalkboard. One of those people might very well be Ed. Steve isn’t going to be able to find out, though, because everyone’s attention is riveted on the man at the front of the room. 

Howard Stark. 

“Now see, in America we’ve currently got about a hundred and thirty million people,” Stark is saying, sketching out the numbers with practiced ease, “and we know that twenty percent are Omegas, fifty percent are Betas and the other thirty percent are Alphas. Cut out the young and the old and you’ve got about seventy-eight million employable people. Now, unemployment rates are at an all time low—God bless Roosevelt—and currently, ninety-eight percent of all Betas and Alphas already have jobs.”

Steve, intrigued, slips into the room as quietly as he can. 

This is a far cry from the flying car demonstration a few weeks ago. 

“Now, of course, Omegas are also at an all-time high in employment, which means that fifteen percent of them _do_ have jobs. Who cares, you say? Well, let’s look at the job market. Since Pearl Harbor, the government has created twelve _million_ civilian jobs, and pulled nine million people into the military. Do the math and there are only about... a million Betas and Alphas left to fill those twelve million new job spots. And that is what we call—” Stark circles the negative number that results from his rapid math and jabs it with the chalk. “—a _labor crisis._ ” 

There is murmuring around the room. Steve, for his part, is utterly transfixed. 

“We are in a _war_ ,” Stark continues, his voice darkening just a touch. “There are thirteen _million_ employable Omegas sitting at home, doing needlepoint and dusting the mantelpiece when they could be filling our factories and farms! What about heats? I have in development right now a compound that will suppress heats for six months at a time. Distracting scents? I have another compound—a monthly injection—that suppresses pheromones completely. All low-cost to produce and one hundred percent effective.

“I don’t have to tell any of you that for the past year, Stark Industries has been providing RutNix to all our Alpha servicemen and women, and it has been critical in the success of American troops. We can safely send thousands of Alphas into battle without ever worrying about Frenzy. 

“I say, why stop there?” Stark continues. “We’ve seen what Alphas are capable of when they’re no longer victims of biology—why not extend that to our Omega citizens as well? America needs to _win this war_ , and I tell you, we won’t win it with an eighty percent investment. Every man, woman, Alpha, Beta and Omega—every _American_ deserves the chance to serve their country.” 

It takes Steve several beats to notice that a few people are now looking at him instead of Stark. One woman in an Army uniform is giving him a particularly inquiring look, and Steve decides that he can come find Ed later. 

“Now, as for cost, I’m asking for a fraction of the investment that was required for RutNix. I have pamphlets prepared…” 

Steve slips out before he can hear the rest. 

  
  


The next day, Steve is labeling test tubes while Dr. Erskine does some sort of quality testing on his samples, when there's a perfunctory knock at the door, and then it swings open to reveal Howard Stark. 

"Doc!" 

Dr. Erskine straightens, looking pleased. "Howard." 

Stark’s attention is already on Steve, though. "Hey, who's this? You finally listened to me!"

"Yes, my new lab assistant, Steve,” says Dr. Erskine, gesturing. “Steve, this is Mr. Stark." 

"Pleased to meet you, darlin'," Stark says, and is shaking Steve's hand before he quite knows what's happening. "Wish I had something as pretty as you for my own lab, but Thelma keeps hiring me these fat old Betas. I don’t suppose I could interest you in a transfer?” Stark asks, flashing a winning smile. 

“I might clash with the drapes,” Steve says stiffly. 

Stark laughs, and turns to Dr. Erskine. “I like him, he’s cute. Now, not to be rude, but I have twenty minutes before I have to go make half a million bucks off the US government.” 

“Ah. They went for the bat bombs, finally?” 

Stark points at him. “We don’t talk about the bat bombs.” 

Dr. Erskine raises his eyebrows. “Don’t we?” 

“For your information, I finally came up with a workable prototype for the proximity fuze bomb, and am about to revolutionize aerial warfare,” Stark says. “The Senator is going to be eating out of my hand.” 

“Of course. Steve, do you mind transferring these back to the incubator?” Dr. Erskine gestures at his test tubes, and Steve nods. “Thank you. Howard, I wanted to talk to you about the latest report your lab generated on the nitramene emissions, but I left the report in my office.” 

“Vita-Rays, Doc. they’re called _Vita-Rays_ ,” Stark corrects, as they start walking toward the door. 

“We are scientists, Howard, not pulp magazine writers.” 

“You have absolutely no sense of product marketing. Have you even named the serum yet?” 

“Why does it need a name?” 

Stark lets out a pained groan as he opens the door, and ushers Dr. Erskine outside. “You’re killing me, Doc. There’s so many possibilities! Serum of the Gods! Super Serum. Insta-Soldier. Mega-Man Mix. Elixir of Enhancement!” 

The door swings shut behind them, and Steve starts carrying racks of test tubes over to the incubator. 

  
  


At home, a letter arrives for _S. Bumes_ , postmarked the day Bucky left. Steve opens it with the utmost care, and spends several minutes just staring at the familiar lines of near-illegible script, unable to read them just yet, breathing slow and careful through the pain. 

That night he goes to Becca and Jack’s place, where Jack feeds them dinner, and then they play rummy because they can’t play spades with only three people. 

“Hey, when’s your next day off?” Becca asks, as Jack lays down a set of fives. “I wanna go see that new movie, _For Whom the Bell Tolls_.” 

“Sounds cheerful,” Steve says, taking a sip of his beer. 

“It’s got Ingrid Bergman,” Jack supplies in an undertone. 

“It’s supposed to be even _better_ than _Casablanca,_ ” Becca says, and draws an eight of hearts from the discard pile. 

“Better than _Casablanca_?” Steve asks, pressing a hand to his chest. 

“Impossible,” Jack agrees. 

Becca huffs, and waves her beer at them defensively. " _Casablanca_ is an amazing movie, and you two just can’t stand it because it’s a love story.” 

“Right. Because it won… how many Academy Awards, again?” 

“I think it was zero,” Steve says. 

“I think you might be right, Steve,” Jack agrees. 

“Shut up, both of you. No one even remembers that stupid war movie that won last year anyway. Steve, are you going to come see the movie with us or not?” 

“Sure,” Steve says easily. It’s his turn, and he picks one of the last cards out of the draw pile, a queen of diamonds. He slots it next to the king of diamonds in his hand, and lays down the three aces he’s been sitting on since the beginning of the game. “I quit St. Catherine’s, so I’ve got all my weekends off now. Saturday okay?” 

“You _what?_ ” 

“About fucking time,” Jack says. 

“I got a new job in a lab last week,” Steve says, grinning. “Downtown. No more gross old Alphas groping me while I help them shave.” 

“A lab?” Becca repeats, wrinkling her nose. 

Steve shrugs, and doesn’t say that he’s actually a contracted government employee, or that he’s fairly certain Dr. Erskine is developing some sort of compound to make soldiers stronger for the war, or that he has personally met and spoken with Howard Stark (who’s kind of an asshole). 

“I like it,” he says instead. 

“If you say so,” Becca replies.

“I’m out,” Jack says, laying down a straight of diamonds from eight to jack. 

“Shit,” says Becca, and Steve takes a swig of his beer. 

  
  


Steve doesn’t see much of Dr. Erskine on Thursday, but Steve has been here long enough now that he knows the daily chores, so it doesn’t make much of a difference except for a lack of orange slices to snack on after lunch. He’s taking careful inventory of their stock solutions when there’s a hand on his shoulder, and Steve jumps and nearly drops his clipboard, and _does_ drop the pen. It lands in a bottle of hydrochloric acid. 

“Shit,” says Steve, and is less surprised than he should be to see Howard Stark on his left, looking apologetic. 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you, darlin',” Stark says with an easy grin. “I called your name, but you weren’t responding.” 

Steve taps his left ear. “Not so good on this side. And when that thing’s going—” He gestures at Dr. Erskine’s mystery machine, which is thumping away in the corner. “—I can be a little deaf.” 

“A lot deaf,” Stark says, looking amused. “Here, let me—” Steve doesn’t catch the rest of what he says, because he turns, sets a bottle of schnapps on the lab bench, and then opens a drawer under the lab bench and starts rifling through it. Eventually, he comes up with a pair of tongs. “Allow me,” he says, tonging them twice, then starts fishing for Steve’s pen in the bottle of hydrochloric acid. 

“Thanks,” Steve says, when his pen is eventually deposited on the countertop, dripping with acid. 

“No problem. Where’s the old buzzard gotten off to this afternoon? I have something for him.” 

“He’s in Jersey.” 

" _Jersey?_ ” 

“Jersey.” 

“May God have mercy on his soul,” Stark declares, and then hefts the schnapps. “Well, he’s definitely going to need this later, then. I’ll catch him before I leave tonight. How’s he been treating you? Still can’t interest you in a transfer down the hall?” 

“Is there more where that came from?” Steve asks, nodding at the bottle. 

Stark laughs, and claps a hand on his shoulder. “Oh, you’re too cute. Trust me, you don’t want anything like this; it’ll take your pretty little head off.” 

Steve, who spent his teenage years drinking moonshine and bathtub gin from old milk bottles, would beg to fucking differ. 

"You know what—actually, let me ask you a question, Steve-o, if you don't mind," Stark says, expression becoming thoughtful. 

"Guess it depends on the question," Steve answers, which makes Stark laugh again. 

"Well, the question is this: of all your little Omega friends, how many of them have jobs?" 

Steve, already irritated, wants to reply that they're Omegas, not _children_ , but he holds his tongue.

“Come on, don’t give me that look,” Stark says cajolingly. “It’s a serious question!”

"Not many," Steve answers, eventually. "Not official jobs, anyhow. But some of them earn money from home, by doing laundry or mending, that kind of stuff. Or they'll find someone on the Upper East Side who needs their house cleaned."

"You used to be a nurse, didn't you, before you came here?"

"Yes, sir," Steve replies. 

"That's quite a job for an Omega, I would think—lot of hours, lot of responsibility."

"I coped," Steve says shortly. 

"I imagine it was hard, though, especially working with all those Alphas, and then the inconvenience of having to take time off once every few months for your cycle—" 

"Mr. Stark, is this about that compound you're developing?" Steve interrupts, patience fraying fast. "The one that suppresses Omega pheromones?" 

Stark looks a bit startled. "Well. Yes.” 

Steve folds his arms over his chest. 

“How did _you_ hear about it?” Stark asks.

"I overheard your presentation last week.”

"Oh. Well, great! What'd you think? Pretty amazing stuff, huh? It's gonna revolutionize the labor force, you know." 

"Actually, I don't think you're going to get too many Omegas interested," Steve tells him, which he hadn't _planned_ to say, but he's beyond irritated at this point. "It's—" 

"Too expensive? It’s actually going to be highly affordable, thanks to a preexisting production line and low material cost.” 

“No, it’s just—” 

“Ah! Long-term fertility outcomes. No, no worries there, our preliminary testing shows a complete restoration of reproductive health, and absolutely no long-term side effects.” 

“ _No_ ,” Steve snaps, louder, tired of being interrupted. “It’s that I don’t think taking away cycles and pheromones will change the actual _system_ that keeps Omegas from finding regular jobs.” 

“But—” 

“Most employers don’t think an Omega can do a job as well as a Beta or an Alpha,” Steve says, steamrolling right over him. “Do you know when they hired me here, there wasn’t even a _box_ on the employment papers for ‘Omega’? Just ‘Alpha’ or ‘Beta’. And even if they _do_ hire one of us, employers want an Omega that’s mated, because they’re less trouble, but one that won’t get pregnant, because once you’re pregnant then you also can’t work. And there’s so much pressure for Omegas to have babies—and almost no access to birth control, and even if there is an _Alpha_ has to buy it—and furthermore, there’s no support for Omegas who already _have_ children—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Stark interrupts, holding up his hands. “Okay. Calm down.” 

Steve closes his mouth, and glares mutinously. 

Stark stares at Steve for a long moment, looking more than a little stunned. Eventually, he lowers his hands back down. 

“Is your compound gonna fix all that, Mr. Stark?” Steve demands, chin jutting out. 

“ _No_ compound is going to fix that, kiddo,” Stark says, and for once his voice doesn’t sound like a radio advertisement. He’s quiet, now. 

“Does the compound have to be purchased by an Alpha?” Steve asks. 

“That’s—Steve, that’s industry standard. The FDA won’t approve it otherwise.” 

“Well, maybe you should put some of your money towards fixin’ that, first.” 

“Maybe I should,” Stark says, thoughtfully. 

“You—” Steve blinks at him. “Really?” 

“I’ve already spent thousands of dollars on this compound. I’d be an idiot to not optimize the market first. We’d discussed it during the developmental stages, of course, but all my consultants were Betas and Alphas—I’m an _idiot_. What else can we do to improve sales?” 

Steve's mouth hangs open in faint disbelief. 

“Darlin’, I didn’t get to be a millionaire by refusing to listen to experts,” Stark replies. He plops down on the stool next to Steve, sets down the schnapps again, and grabs a sheet of paper and the pen that had just been rescued from the hydrochloric acid. Then he looks at Steve, pen at the ready. "Come on. Tell me."

“Well,” Steve says, after a beat, “first of all, you’ve got to stop calling all Omegas ‘darlin’.” 

“I only say that to the cute ones,” Stark replies, flashing him a grin. 

Steve scowls. 

Stark laughs. “Come on, kiddo, I need marketing strategies, not just a list of things that piss you off. I have it on good authority that most Omegas—tiny blondes named Steve aside—are _flattered_ to be called darlin’, and sugar, and such like.” 

Steve sighs. “Fine. Write down the one about Omegas being able to buy it themselves, then.” 

Stark scribbles it down obediently. 

And as they argue back and forth about labor laws and employer rights and who exactly should pay for the compound if it’s a stipulation for employment, Steve thinks that maybe—just _maybe_ —he can kind of see what Dr. Erskine sees in this man, after all. 

  
  


The same day, Steve stays a little later than usual, and just before leaving he stops by Dr. Erskine’s office to drop off the reorder list that needs his stamp of approval before it can be mailed off. In the office is Dr. Erskine, with a familiar bottle of schnapps on the desk.

“Mr. Stark found you,” Steve says, nodding. 

Dr. Erskine, who had been looking rather morose, smiles a little. “Yes. It is from Ausberg. My home.” 

“Germany?” Steve asks. 

“Surely my English is not so good that you were thinking I was an American?” 

“Well,” Steve hedges, “it’s rude to assume.” 

Dr. Erskine’s smile turns wry. “You would think so, yes." 

Steve thinks about that, about the posters in the alleyways that say _Don't speak the enemy's language, speak American!_ , and about the little wooden box the size of a pen that Dr. Erskine carries around, inscribed with Hebrew, the bottom half blackened with soot. 

"Not everyone is so tolerant as you, my friend," Dr. Erskine says gently. 

"If anyone ever says anything to you in front of me, I'll punch their lights out," Steve says stoutly. 

Dr. Erskine laughs. “I would enjoy that. Sit down, have a drink with me, Steve.”

“Omegas aren’t supposed to drink,” Steve says, Stark's words from earlier ringing in his mind. 

“Nor, as you say, are they supposed to ‘punch peoples’ lights out’, so I have every confidence that you are capable of both. I have only one glass, but I bet I can find—” He rummages around in his desk drawer, and by the time Steve sits opposite him, he’s making a triumphant noise and plonking a mortar onto the desk. He pours a few fingers of schnapps in the glass, and then fills the mortar to the brim. 

Steve takes the glass, when it’s pushed toward him. He’s more than a little relieved that Dr. Erskine is the one drinking out of the mortar. 

“No toast?” Steve asks, when Dr. Erskine immediately knocks back half his drink. 

“What is there to toast?” Dr. Erskine asks, after swallowing. 

Steve shrugs, and tips his own glass back. 

After a moment, Dr. Erskine drains the other half of his drink, and then pours another. 

“Tomorrow is a big day for me,” he says finally. “My project—years in the making, the very thing that brought me to this country, in fact—is ready for testing.” 

“That sounds like a good thing,” Steve says carefully, and takes another sip of the schnapps. It’s sweet, almost like berries. 

“It _is_ a good thing. The serum is perfect. It will do what it is designed to do. But…” Dr. Erskine trails off, and stares at the bottle of schnapps. 

There’s a long pause. 

“The serum is designed to make a perfect soldier,” Dr. Erskine says, at long last. “It enhances every natural ability man has—speed, strength, hearing, intelligence, metabolism, anything you can imagine. But it also enhances something that science has never been able to touch before: the soul.” 

Steve stares. 

“You see,” Dr. Erskine explains, “if given to a good man, he would become great. But if given to a bad man, he would become… terrible. Monstrous. And the man they have chosen...” 

Steve’s heart pounds. 

Dr. Erskine shakes his head. “He is a decorated soldier. Clever. Strong. He has killed many Nazis for America. But I fear what is truly in his heart.” 

“You can’t... pick someone else?” Steve asks, eventually. 

“There were many candidates,” Dr. Erskine says. “And I am but one of the judges.” 

“I’m sorry,” Steve says honestly. 

Dr. Erskine exhales, and then shrugs and gives Steve a smile. “Perhaps I am wrong, and he is a good man. Perhaps my serum will do nothing at all! You want to come and see? You have been working hard on it, these last few weeks.” 

“I—really?” Steve says, startled. 

“Yes! Come at seven tomorrow. You can stand next to me and hand me things, make me look important. Howard will have his entire crew there, you know, and the Senator will doubtless have his staff as well. I will look old and sad by myself.” 

“Sounds fun,” Steve says. 

“Ah, probably not,” Dr. Erskine disagrees. 

  
  


He could not have been more right. 

  
  


Steve doesn’t think he’s ever going to forget the sequence of events that disastrous Friday morning. 

Not just because it was the worst thing he’s ever lived through, not just because he almost _died_ , but because he’s repeated the story of it so many times that it now spills from his mouth without any conscious effort from his own brain. 

He was standing next to Dr. Erskine, holding the vials, to the right of the machine. The soldier was undressing on the left side of the machine. Mr. Stark was approximately six feet to the right, next to a control panel. There were a lot of other people in the room, and he doesn’t know who they were, and he doesn’t remember exactly where they were standing, either. Maybe two or three nurses. A lot of men in suits. A tall woman in a military uniform. At that point, only two of the vials had been loaded into the machine, and there were maybe thirty or forty left in the rack he'd been holding. No, he can’t remember the exact number. 

Then there was an explosion from his right. From ground level. No, not from up top, it seemed to come from the ground. 

There had been shouting, and screaming. They had ducked away from the shower of debris, and before he stood all the way up, Dr. Erskine had grabbed his arm and started to pull him back—no, he doesn’t know where they were going to go. He didn’t get to see the room, just Dr. Erskine’s face. He’d looked scared. 

Then, three gunshots. 

No, he doesn’t know which direction they were from. The room was so small, and the shots were so loud. 

He really doesn’t remember much at all after that, because his chest had hurt so much, and he couldn’t breathe. He remembers falling forward and not being able to catch himself, and feeling glass crunch beneath him. He remembers someone trying to yank something out from underneath his body, and rolling away, curling around it.

He remembers seeing Howard Stark’s face against the ceiling, his eyes wide and his mouth forming words Steve couldn’t hear. 

And then nothing. 

No, he doesn’t know the formula for the serum. No, he doesn’t know where Dr. Erskine kept his research notes, and no, he never spoke about how he created it. 

Yes, his loyalty is to the United States of America. 

  
  


When the door opens, Steve doesn't even look up. He doesn't know how long he's been in this room, but he's only been let out to use the bathroom twice, and his stomach is cramping painfully with hunger. His brain feels like it's running several speeds behind his eyeballs. 

Footsteps click on the tile floor. Steve folds his hands together, immune to the feeling of his cuffs clinking together at this point, and reminds himself not to grip the table he’s chained to because he found out hours (days?) ago that he will break it that way. The chair across from him scrapes against the floor, and Steve thinks he can hear individual fibers of fabric stretch as the person sits. 

The world with two ears is _loud_. 

"Mr. Barnes," a cool, female voice says, with an English accent that rounds out the R in his name. 

Steve looks up, and finds himself seated across from a woman in military dress. She looks vaguely familiar, but she's also styled with perfect victory curls and red lipstick, so maybe it's just the look. Her brown eyes survey him with acuity. 

Steve swallows, though his throat went dry and sticky long ago. "Nice to meet you," he rasps.

"I haven't even introduced myself," she says. 

Steve just looks at her. 

“I’m Agent Carter, with the Strategic Scientific Reserve,” she says, after a pause. “And it’s nice to meet you, too.” 

Steve blinks gummy eyes, and waits. 

After a long pause, she continues, “Do you know, Mr. Barnes, that Dr. Erskine never had a lab assistant before you? Two and a half years, he’s been in the lab, alone, and then one day, there’s you.”

Steve shifts in the chair, and his left knee accidentally hits the underside of the table again. His instinct is to cross them, but his legs are too long for that now. Steve had never imagined how uncomfortable it was to be so _tall_. 

“Why did he hire you?” Agent Carter asks, point-blank. 

“He didn’t say,” Steve answers. 

“Tell me about the conversation.” 

Steve has told this part of the story before; not as many times as That Friday Morning, but enough that he can recite the lines without much thought. “I was at the recruitment center in Flushing Meadows. I was trying to pass as a Beta to join the Nursing Corps. He caught me out. We talked about why I wanted to join the Army. I thought he was going to arrest me, but instead he offered me a job. That’s it.” 

“You’ve never worked in a lab, before.” 

“No, ma’am.” 

“How long were you a nurse, Mr. Barnes?” 

“Two years.” 

“You liked it?” 

Steve shrugs. “It was a job.” 

Agent Carter raises an eyebrow. “That’s not the response of someone who tried to illegally enlist in the Nursing Corps on five separate occasions.”

“Well, if I was going to break my back changing sheets and scrubbing bedpans, I thought it might as well be actually doing it in service of my country,” Steve says, trying to keep the frustration out of his voice. 

He’s answered these questions so many times, and he doesn’t understand why he has to repeat this _again_. 

“By breaking the law?” Agent Carter asks. 

“A law based purely on _sexism_.” 

“Did your husband know what you were doing?” 

Steve eyes her warily. “No.”

“What would he have thought, if you’d gotten into the Army? If you'd been sent overseas?" 

“That’s not relevant.” 

“It’s not?”

“Does anyone ask how an Omega would feel, if their Alpha went off to war?” Steve snaps. 

Agent Carter’s eyebrows lift. “You resent your Alpha for leaving you?” 

“I don’t _resent_ him,” Steve says, gritting his teeth. “I’m proud of him, I’m proud of everyone over there fighting for us, but American soldiers are over there laying down their lives to defend our country, and I’m supposed to sit around and listen to fucking reports on the radio? Because of my gender? Why does a goddamn chromosome decide if I get to hold a gun or—or a fucking _broom?_ ” 

“Mr. Barnes,” Agent Carter says carefully. 

It’s only then that Steve notices that the bar he’s chained to is bent out of shape, and his hands are wrapped around it. 

He’s so fucking _strong_. 

“I just wanted to be useful,” he says, quieter. “I thought—if someone just gave me a chance—” 

He stops, not sure if he wants to finish. If he _can_. 

That afternoon in the recruitment center seems like a lifetime ago. 

Agent Carter watches him. 

Steve deflates. “Doesn’t matter anymore.” 

After another long pause, Agent Carter leans forward. “Mr. Barnes,” she says. “What if I were to give you a gun, instead of a broom?” 

Steve studies her, sure this is a trap.

“What would you do?” Agent Carter asks. 

“I don’t want to shoot anyone,” Steve replies carefully. 

“Not even if it were… useful?” 

She’s so neatly turned his own words against him that Steve has no reply. 

Before the questioning had started, and almost immediately after waking up in a cell, Steve had been weighed, measured, and then made to lift weights, sprint the length of a hallway, submerge his head underwater, copy a map from memory, solve equations… And no one had told him his results, but he’s not an idiot. This strange body he now inhabits is _dangerous_. 

Steve has been fighting his entire life to be seen as something other than a sickly little Omega. 

Never in his wildest dreams did he picture it ending like this. He’d never thought he’d be someone that the US government was _afraid_ of. 

But here he is, a freak of nature, with his wrists and ankles in chains, under guard, in a subbasement of God knows what building, being interrogated like the prisoner of a war he’d never actually fought in. 

“Agent Carter,” he says, because she seems reasonable, and he’s so fucking _tired_ of trying to figure out what to say that’ll make this all stop. “I... Listen, I know that I wasn’t supposed to get this serum. I know that nobody knows what to do with some six foot tall Omega who can bend iron with his hands, but I promise you, I don’t… I don’t want any trouble."

"Unfortunately, Mr. Barnes," Agent Carter sighs, "it looks like trouble found you." 

  
  


The questioning goes on, and on, and on, and eventually Steve finds little pockets of time slipping past him. He still hasn’t been given anything to eat or drink. There’s no clocks or windows, just an endless drumbeat of questioning and testing. 

He’s starting to doubt that he’ll ever leave this place. 

“What sort of compounds were you placing in the incubator?” the man asks. 

Steve shakes his head. “He told me it was amino acids.” 

“What sort of amino acids?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“Where did they come from?” 

“He had a bottle in the storeroom.” 

Then, in another room: 

“Make a fist,” the nurse instructs, and Steve watches a giant hand draw its fingers in, watches tendons and muscles shift beneath skin like an animation of a god. 

Thick, dark blood fills a glass bottle, and Steve thinks about Bucky. Just for a moment he’s back in their apartment, curled up on their bed, and he can feel strong arms around him, can smell Bucky's unique Alpha scent and feel the prickle of his stubble against his scalp, and he’s small and safe and loved again. 

Then, back in his chains: 

“What did he mean by amino acids?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“Where did he get them from?” 

“He had a bottle in the storeroom.” 

“Did he make it himself?” 

“I don’t know.” 

Then, flat on his back, a metal bar resting on the palms of his hand, and a voice saying, “Add another hundred pounds.” 

When they take the weights away, Steve feels nauseous, and there’s a faint ringing in his ears. The hallway warps in and out of focus as tiles disappear beneath his feet. They ask him more questions about amino acids. He does multiplication tables, struggling to make the numbers on the paper stay still. They want to know where the bottles in the storeroom came from. 

Then, there’s Agent Carter again. 

She stands in the doorway for a moment, and for a moment Steve sees three of her, but then she slides herself back together. He blinks, hears heels clicking on the tile, and then she’s suddenly _right there_ , and unlocking his cuffs from the bar. 

Time for more testing. 

But then she unlocks each of his wrists, and then kneels to unlock his ankles as well. 

Steve blinks rapidly. 

“Come with me,” she says, offering him a hand up. 

The gesture is so confusing that Steve stares at it for several minutes, maybe hours—it’s extra confusing because he keeps seeing Bucky’s hand instead—before he eventually ignores her offer and pushes his palms flat against the table. His ears buzz as he rises. 

“Are you all right?” she asks. 

“Fine,” Steve rasps. 

“Clearly,” she says. “Come along, then.” 

He follows her out of the interrogation room and into the hallway, head swimming. The hallway smells of cigarettes and coffee and… stewed beef? He glances around, and his mind feels like a camera, taking in still shots, overexposed on the backs of his retinas, _snap, snap, snap, snap_ —a door, a lightswitch, the backs of her shoes and the left one is scuffed, another door, another door, another door—that door smells like urine and bleach, a bathroom—a light fixture with one bulb burnt out—

“Agent Carter, what the _hell_ do you think you’re doing?” a man demands, striding down the hallway. “He’s scheduled to meet with Burke and Cross right now!” 

“He’s been cleared,” Agent Carter replies. 

The man—tall, broad, in a suit that isn’t as finely pressed as Agent Carter’s military uniform—Steve would have had to _crane his neck_ to see his face before—

“Excuse me?” the man demands. 

“He has,” she repeats slowly, “been cleared.” 

“No, he fucking well hasn’t!” 

“Your team was given five days to investigate whether Mr. Barnes was a threat to the United States, and if you haven’t managed to arrive at the conclusion that he’s nothing more than an unlucky civilian by now, then I would have to wonder what exactly you spent your time _doing_.” 

The man’s eyes narrow, and he starts advancing down the hallway. “Listen, miss. We’ve all had about enough of you around here. Do you have _any idea_ what kind of shit show this has created? Five days isn’t enough time to conduct an investigation, it’s a _joke_ , and you’re a goddamn idiot if you think that we’re going to rush through our jobs just because you made a little declaration that you clearly pulled out of your—”

“And serial blood draws are essential to investigating Mr. Barnes’ innocence?” Agent Carter interrupts. “Repetitive questions about how Dr. Erskine created his serum?” 

“Don’t even get me started on that fucking Kraut. What kind of scientist doesn’t take any goddamn _notes?_ ”

“Dr. Erskine was hand-chosen—” 

“I don’t care if he was picked by God himself!” 

“—by President Roosevelt,” Agent Carter finishes. “As was I. The Strategic Scientific Reserve does not exist within the military framework for a _reason_ , and Mr. Barnes is not under your command. If you have an issue, please feel free to bring it up to the President.” 

She starts walking again. 

“I will!” the man shouts at her retreating back. 

Steve hastens to follow. 

Agent Carter takes him down to the very end of a hallway, through a door, and through another door, which opens up to a familiar prison cell. 

“Here,” Agent Carter says, and unlocks the cell door. “Unfortunately, this is the best I can do for you for at the moment. As you can imagine, having our primary base compromised as it was has put us at a disadvantage when it comes to both time and resources. Right now, you’re no longer under suspicion for treason, which is good, but it also leaves you as a loose end at best, and a threat to national security at worst, and—well. Senator Brandt is less than interested in creative solutions. I’ve been working with Mr. Stark to try to create an alternative for you, but it—Mr. Barnes? Mr. Barnes, are you listening?”

The question comes from across an ocean. 

“It’s been five days?” Steve asks, muzzily. 

It doesn’t seem humanly possible, but then again, neither had holding his breath for ten minutes straight. 

Agent Carter nods. “It’s August 19th,” she says. When Steve visibly struggles to put that together, she adds, “Thursday.” 

Almost a week. 

That at least explains why he's got an almost full beard on his face.

Of course, she could tell him it was November of 1947 and he’d probably believe her right now. 

“Go sit down,” she instructs briskly. “I’ll get you some water. You sound terrible, and there’s quite a bit we need to discuss.” 

Steve moves into the cell and doesn’t sit down on the bed so much as knees seem to give way conveniently close to the cot edge. It’s a long way down, when you’re six feet tall, and his bottom hits the bed so hard his vision swims. He hears Agent Carter’s shoes clicking away, and focuses blearily on the little pot in the corner that must serve as a urinal. 

Five days awake, and he hasn’t had any food or water. 

No need to pee if you’re not drinking, he figures. 

The words start to run together in his mind, as the world fades around him. Treason, he thinks. They thought. Treason. Five days, interrogation, torture, had they been torturing him? What’s the solution? A loose end. Stark. Carter. 

Bucky. 

Then nothing at all. 

  
  


The next thing Steve knows, he’s waking up on the cot in an uncomfortable sideways sprawl. The door to the jail cell has been closed, and he’s alone. Across from his cot, on the floor, is a metal pitcher and a glass. 

Steve downs two full cups of water before it occurs to him that maybe he shouldn’t. 

He lowers the glass, looks down into the pitcher, but it's just clear, cold water inside, as far as he can tell. He sniffs it. Pours a little more into the cup, and inspects it through the clear glass. 

Will drugs even _work_ on him now? 

Steve sets the pitcher and glass back on the floor, and sits back on the cot, deciding not to take the chance. 

He certainly _feels_ fine—more than fine, actually. Rested, his mouth no longer quite so dry, alone for the first time in over a week, Steve thinks this is the best he's ever felt… in his entire life, really. He has no back pain, no ache in his ribs or his hips, no headache pressing behind his eyeballs, and he can take in an _entire breath_ without wheezing or coughing at all. He doesn’t even notice he’s breathing, now, it’s so easy. 

Is this the serum, or is this just how it feels to be healthy? 

Steve takes another breath, just to marvel at it. 

The thing is—

The thing is that this body is horrible, in so many ways. 

He towers over everyone—maybe he’d even tower over Bucky, over Mrs. Barnes, over everyone who used to hug him and press his face into their shoulder and tell him that everything was going to be okay. He feels like his arms would crush them to death, now. 

When he raises his voice, people look _scared_.

Then there are his hands—thick and meaty, where once they were slim and delicate. Artist’s hands, Ma used to tell him, squeezing them between her own. Steve has held a pen twice since the change, and his handwriting had looked closer to Bucky’s chicken scratch than his own neat, looping letters. His hands are for destruction, now, not art. 

Steve hasn’t seen his face yet. He doesn’t want to. He’s sure he probably looks like some sort of movie star Alpha, with thicker hair, a sharp jawline and all his acne scars gone. He has the beginnings of an actual _beard_ on his face, strange and prickly and weirdly warm.

But here’s the thing: This body works, and it works _well_. 

So he should be grateful. 

He _is_ grateful. 

The part of him that feels nauseous every time he thinks about his broad chest or his thick wrists or the way Bucky is never going to be able to curl around him ever again— 

That part just needs to shut up and be grateful, too. 

  
  


Steve paces the cell, and thinks, _treason_ , and _threat to national security_. 

They’re not going to let him go. He knows that much. He is never going back to Brooklyn, and he’s never going to see Becca and Jack again, he’s never going to see _Bucky_ again. They’ll tell the world he died that day along with Dr. Erskine, and Steve Barnes will cease to exist. 

Part of him screams that he should get a lawyer, a trial, that he’s still an American citizen, that he didn’t _ask_ to become this freak of nature— 

But he knows it would do no good. 

These people, whoever they are, whatever they do, he knows that they are beyond the government the same way he himself is beyond the laws of nature, now. Basic human rights were not created for things like him. They proved that when they put him in shackles and kept him starved and awake and for a week straight, and the thought of what else they have planned for him terrifies him to his very core. He doesn’t want to be put in chains again. He doesn’t want his head held underwater again, or that awful hood that kept removing more and more oxygen, or all the _tissue samples_ — 

Steve stops, closes his eyes, and forces himself to take in a deep breath against the iron bands of panic around his chest. 

He can’t do it again. 

He _can’t_. 

So whatever solution Agent Carter has come up with, Steve needs to be on board with it, because he has a feeling the alternative is going to be the very cell he’s sitting in, for the rest of his life. 

  
  


Agent Carter eventually appears again, looking significantly more stressed, and she's brought Howard Stark with her. Her victory curls and red, red lipstick are still perfect, and Steve has no idea how much time has passed since she left him here. He feels like he slept for days.

“We don’t have much time,” she says, her eyes sweeping up and down Steve’s body clinically. “I’m sorry. I would have come sooner, had I known things were going into motion so quickly.” 

Steve rises, unease curdling in the pit of his stomach. 

“Senator Brandt is on his way as we speak, so listen closely. This is the situation,” Agent Carter says, her voice low and crisp. “You are all that remains of a project that was supposed to produce an entire army of soldiers, and we have no way of recreating the serum. Preliminary attempts to isolate it from your tissue samples have been unsuccessful. Therefore, the Strategic Scientific Reserve has classified the project as a failure, and we’ve been retasked as of—” She stops, and her lips press together like she’s holding back something truly venomous. 

“As of five fucking minutes ago,” Stark puts in, from where he’s sorting through the contents of his briefcase. “Flight to London leaves in three hours, like we don’t have other projects that need—” 

“What this means,” Agent Carter cuts in, “is that you’re being left as a very expensive loose end, and quite a few people would like to leave you down here for the lab rats to devour.” 

Steve’s heart skips a beat. 

“A goddamn waste,” Stark says. 

“We had another idea,” Agent Carter agrees. 

From the briefcase, Stark takes out a vial and a syringe. “Remember the Omega compound you were gonna help me sell?” he asks brightly. 

“The—to suppress pheromones,” Steve says, that day in the lab a _lifetime_ ago. 

“Right. And cycles. Luckily, it wasn’t actually too hard to modify it to make you smell like an Alpha, we just hadn’t tried because, frankly, where’s the market for _t_ _hat?_ ” 

“Wait, what?” Steve says. 

“Perverts, maybe,” Stark mutters, mostly to himself. 

Steve wonders if maybe the serum actually _hadn’t_ cured his asthma after all. His lungs expand but it feels like he’s not pulling in any air. 

_This_ is their solution? 

“Listen,” Agent Carter says, focused and serious in sharp contrast to Stark. “The Senator is on his way down to thank you for your service to your country, and explain that you can never see the light of day again. You’re useless to him as an Omega. But if we convince him that you can pass as Alpha, he may at least let you be the soldier America was counting on that serum to make.” 

Steve stares. 

“We don’t have much time,” Agent Carter says. 

“You want me to be a soldier,” Steve says slowly. “You want me to go fight in the war.” 

Her face softens a little. “I think you’re a good person in a bad situation, Mr. Barnes. I’m trying to give you some control over your future, but I probably don’t have to tell you that no one is ever going to let you have that as long as you’re an Omega.” 

And isn’t that the goddamn truth. 

Steve inhales and feels his broad chest expand in response, and tries to picture himself in the uniform Bucky had sailed away in. Tries to imaging holding a gun with these gigantic hands of his. Going to _war_. Sleeping in tents, huddling in trenches, aiming a gun at another person and pulling the trigger and hoping that they die. 

Then he remembers the weight of shackles on his wrists, and he thinks, _I can do this._

“Call me Steve, Agent Carter,” he says, and steps up the bars, to where Stark is standing with a syringe and a gleam in his eye. 

  
  


Senator Brandt is halfway through his handshake when he startles, and whips his head around to scowl at Agent Carter. 

“Carter! What the hell is this? You told me it was an _Omega_.” 

Stark steps up smoothly. “He is. But thanks to a small, genius, and rather timely invention of my own, the world never needs to know that.” 

Senator Brandt squints at him irritably. “ _Invention_.” 

“A long-acting, injectable compound, similar to the RutNix that I supply for a premium cost to the US military, but designed to instead to mask natural Omega pheromones and instead create the olfactory illusion of an Alpha, in combination—” 

“So, what?” Senator Brandt demands. “Now he smells like an Alpha, what good does that do me?”

“I can fight,” Steve says. 

“ _Fight,_ ” the Senator repeats. 

“I can be a soldier. In the war. All I’ve ever wanted was to help the war effort, it’s why I started working for Dr. Erskine in the first place, and if I’m all that’s left of his legacy then—then I should honor his work by becoming the soldier he would have wanted.”

Steve can’t believe he just said that. 

It sounds good, though. It sounds better than this jail cell, and shackles on his wrists, and never seeing the light of day again. 

The Senator’s lip curls. “I’m not sending a million dollar science experiment overseas to get blown up with a bunch of teenaged grunts.” 

“That _was_ the intended purpose of the project, sir,” Agent Carter reminds him. 

"The intended purpose of the project was to make the process _replicable_ , so we could blow up a thousand men and still have a thousand more behind them! Now I have _one!_ ” 

“You saw his testing, sir,” Agent Carter replies evenly. “You know what he’s capable of.” 

“Listen, Alpha-smelling or not, I’m not sending an Omega off to war!” the Senator snaps. “This is ridiculous, even for you, Carter.”

“So maybe he can’t be a soldier,” Stark says, jumping back in. “Surely you can find _some_ better use for him besides being dissected to death in a lab. Anything! Look at the man, he’s a six foot tall Hercules with perfect teeth. Forget Carey Grant, Hollywood would hire him in a heartbeat.” 

The room is silent. 

Senator Brandt’s eyes flick over to Steve, and then back to Stark. “Hollywood?” 

Wordlessly, Stark gestures at Steve’s… everything. 

Steve’s stomach turns over uncomfortably. 

“Hollywood, huh,” the Senator says again, with more thought. He eyes Steve like a piece of meat. After a time, he says, “It’s not a bad idea, actually.” 

Steve struggles not to look away, but something about the Senator’s expression makes his skin crawl, and it’s pissing him off. 

“Actually,” the Senator says slowly, “I think I’ve got just the thing. But, before we go any further—son, I need to know that you’re prepared to go through with this.” 

“I—” Steve starts hotly, but the Senator holds up a hand. 

“Now, just wait a minute. Think about this. We’re asking you to act like an Alpha, son. You’ve been an Omega your whole life, and I expect you’re accustomed to a certain way of living—but if you start going around as an Alpha, things will be very different for you. Expectations will be higher. You can’t go around having emotional displays or letting everyone walk all over you. You’ll have to be confident. Smart. _Tough_. It’s harder to be an Alpha than you probably expect. I need to know you’re willing to stick with this.” 

Right. 

Bucky always said Steve was so angry all the time because his body wasn’t big enough to contain it, but it turns out that he was wrong. Steve is six feet tall and rage still fills every _inch_ of him. 

This condescending asshole is every Alpha Steve ever punched in the street, the ones who would catcall and steal apples off the fruit cart and torment the local mongoloid, but instead of an alleyway off Jay Street and some no-name in suspenders, Steve is in a jail cell and this is a Senator of the United States. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Steve sees Stark making a considering sort of face, but Agent Carter looks like she’s had something foul-smelling shoved under her nose. 

Steve inhales. Exhales. Grits his teeth and says, “I’ll do whatever it takes to serve my country, sir.” 

“Atta boy,” the Senator says, beaming. 

And that's how Steven Barnes becomes Captain America. 


	3. 1943 Part II

The next time Steve sees Agent Carter, it’s several months later and he’s in Italy. It's a lot more dreary than Ms. Fiorentino had always described, but then again, it's November and they're a scant five miles from the front line of a world war, so maybe this isn't Italy at best. Steve also just got booed off stage for the first time on his ridiculous tour, so today hasn't been his best day, either.

She finds him sitting on the edge of the stage, just barely sheltered from the rain by the roof, legs dangling off the side in a way that makes him feel small again. Her victory curls have fallen prey to the damp, frizzing at the edges, but she's still beautiful. 

"Captain Rogers," she says. 

He's no longer a Barnes, of course. Can't have an Alpha that's married to another Alpha. They severed all his connections to his life with Bucky and built him a new one from the ground up—right down to his birthday, which is now the 4th of July, because somebody somewhere in the President's wartime cabinet has a sense of humor. 

"Just Steve," he replies, and huffs out a silent laugh. "Not much of a captain, am I?" 

One eyebrow goes up. "Well, that's not what I expected to hear from 'America’s New Hope'."

Steve rolls his eyes, and sets his pencil down. The postcard is too cheap to stand up to the humidity, and the lines of the sketch are too fat, too fuzzy. He needs to find another and start over. "Is this part of your new London assignment?" he asks. "Or did some other schmuck accidentally ruin that project, too?" 

Agent Carter laughs. "Officially, I'm several miles west of here, making sure Howard doesn’t blow up the other half of Vestone.” 

“And unofficially?” 

“If nothing else, Howard wanted some feedback from you on how things were going," Agent Carter says, and pulls out a slim cardboard case that is identical to the other ones Steve has received these last few months, except that those had come by an official courier instead of being hand delivered by an international intelligence agent. 

He accepts the box, and slides it into his pocket. "They've been working, I guess, so no complaints. Last at least a month, like he said they would, and I've still got ten fingers and ten toes. No one wants to stick me back in the lab." 

Agent Carter purses her lips. After a moment of clear debate, she says, "I am sorry, you know. That you ended up…" Her eyes flick up to the deserted stage, and then back to Steve. "I meant to help." 

Steve shrugs one shoulder. “I’m healthy. I’ve got room and board every night. They say bond sales go up by ten percent in every state I visit—that’s thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars into the war effort. If I gotta wear tights and punch a fake Hitler six nights a week in return… there are worse things.” 

Even as he speaks, an ambulance is pulling up to the camp, and wounded soldiers are unloaded one by one. 

“I mean, look at these guys,” Steve says, and turns to find Agent Carter already watching. “They look like they’ve been through hell. I got no right to complain.” 

Agent Carter tilts her head in agreement. “These men more than most. Schmidt sent out a force to Azzano. Two hundred men went up against him and less than fifty returned. Your audience contained what was left of the 107th—the rest were killed or captured.” 

Steve sits up straight. “The 107th?” 

Jesus. 

_Bucky_. 

  
  


“You’re really sure about this?” Agent Carter had asked, hand on the ignition of the truck.

“He’s my husband,” Steve had said. 

“It’s been over a month,” Agent Carter tells him. “You know the chances that he’s still—” 

“He’s my _husband_ ,” Steve had repeated. 

“Just checking,” Agent Carter had said lightly. 

"Drive," Steve had ordered, and she had.

What Steve has learned these last few months, is that when you're a white male Alpha who also happens to be six feet tall, when you speak—people _listen_. 

Usually it makes him feel uncomfortable, to have so much authority just because of his supposed gender, makes him wonder if he could abuse it, if he could make the wrong decision and no one would correct him because it’s an _Alpha_ giving the orders. But now Bucky is behind enemy lines and no one is planning to go get him, and Steve suddenly finds that he will abuse every last inch of his newfound power to get him back. 

  
  


“Do you know how to read this?” Agent Carter asks, unfolding a topographical map of Italy. She has to shout a bit to be heard over the din of the airplane. 

“I can learn,” Steve replies, which had also been his reply to “Have you ever jumped out of a plane before?” and also “Can you shoot a gun?”. 

Agent Carter’s face twitches minutely, and he sees her take in a deep breath. She hands him a compass, and says, “Here’s what you need to know. Every square on here is one square mile, and every contour line is eighty feet of elevation change. Longitude and latitude on the sides, but you won’t use those if you’re communicating with military personnel, you need the UTM—that’s right there, in red. The declination in this area is roughly plus three degrees—remember that, for when we go over using the compass.” 

Steve pays attention as best he can, making sure his eyes zero in on the parts of the map she indicates, because he’s found that in addition to everything else, the serum has also left him able to memorize pretty much anything he looks particularly hard at. 

When they’re finished with the map lesson, Agent Carter asks, “How about hand signals?” 

“I know the important ones,” Steve says. 

Agent Carter gives him an unimpressed look, which tells him she knows exactly which joke he’s setting up here. 

“Well, who am I gonna communicate with, the Nazis?” Steve asks. “It’s not like I have a team. If there’s a universal hand signal for ‘Give me back my Alpha or I’ll blow your head off’, I’m all ears.” 

Agent Carter exhales and stares at him, clearly frustrated. 

“Sorry,” Steve says, and he is, somewhere under the adrenaline and gnawing need to have Bucky _here, now, with him_. 

“I’m trying to help you come out of this alive, Steve,” Agent Carter says, with more patience than Steve is really expecting. 

He tries to summon a little of his own. “I appreciate it. I do. But, Agent Carter, cramming six weeks of basic training into an hour-long plane ride probably isn’t going to raise my odds of survival a whole lot.” 

“You’re smart, and you’re motivated,” Agent Carter replies, her face set. “Post-serum, your brain works on a level that’s higher than you probably even realize. If anything I tell you now comes back to you in a moment of need, it’ll have been worth our time.” 

“Hey!” Stark calls from the cockpit. “Did you guys hear about the time Little Audrey was the only passenger on her flight, and it was about to crash?” 

Agent Carter grimaces. 

Steve, who hasn’t actually heard this one, tilts his head toward the cockpit. 

“The pilot said to the co-pilot, ‘There’s only two parachutes, you grab the other one and let’s get out of here.’ ‘Well, what about Little Audrey?’ the co-pilot asked. ‘Fuck Little Audrey!’ the pilot said.” 

Agent Carter puts her head in her hands. 

“An’ Little Audrey just laughed, and laughed, because she knew they didn’t have time!” 

Steve huffs out a laugh, which is completely inaudible over Stark’s own cackling. 

“Now you do one, Steve-o,” he yells over his shoulder. 

The only Little Audrey joke Steve can think of is the one with the cannibals on the island, and everyone knows that one. 

“Steve has to learn basic hand signals,” Agent Carter cuts in. 

“No fuuuun,” Stark complains. 

“We can tell horrid jokes when all this is over and there’s enough wine to make them actually funny,” she replies. “Steve, let’s begin. Quickly.” 

They work through hand signals, as much hand-to-hand basics as can be covered in a flying tin can, a rundown of guns, their corresponding bullets and how to load and unload them, and a Morse code cheat-sheet is quickly scribbled out on a scrap of paper and tucked into one of Steve’s pockets. They’ve just covered the map of the Nazi bas itself when the night sky around them suddenly lights up with fire, and the plane starts to rattle dangerously. 

It hits Steve, then, that this is real. They are in a war zone, and there are enemy planes actively trying to gun them down, _right now_. 

If the plane crashes, they will all die. 

Stark and Agent Carter are risking their _lives_ for him.

When Steve jumps, someone could shoot him down as he plummets to Earth. He could land directly into a swarm of German troops. He could show up to this compound where they’re holding Bucky, and someone could open fire with a machine gun, and it would be the last thing he ever knew. 

Steve is no stranger to death, but only when death is an indolent, creeping thing, taking root in capillaries and alveoli one by one, a strangulation protracted over days and weeks. 

Here, death is a blink away. 

He’s suddenly and viscerally glad for every second of the last hour Agent Carter has spent teaching him. 

"Thank you,” he says to Agent Carter, looking her straight in the eye because he means it, now, means it more than any other thank you he’s ever given before. “Thank you, for helping me.”

She’s willing to _die_ , just to get him to Bucky. 

Agent Carter looks taken aback. “Well,” she says, after a flustered moment, “don’t thank me just yet, we’re not even at the drop point—” 

“Mr. Stark, thank you for the ride,” Steve adds, and grabs his shield, heads for the exit. 

“What—Steve, get back here!” Agent Carter yells. 

Another explosion rocks the planet. 

“As soon as I’m clear, you guys turn this plane around and get the hell out of here,” Steve orders. A voice in the back of his head is screaming to check his gear one more time, check the gun for bullets, at least check the _parachute_ , but he ignores it. There’s no time for that. 

“ _Steven Barnes_ ,” Agent Carter barks. 

“Don’t know him,” Steve says, with a cheer he doesn’t feel. “You’re looking at Captain America right now.” 

And then he jumps. 

  
  


Steve doesn’t land in the middle of a swarm of Germans, but he does land in a river and almost drowns in his own parachute. It’s only his knife (“the knife goes on the shoulder strap, for easy access,” Agent Carter had said, tucking it into place) that ends up saving him. Steve swims to the river bank, panting, and turns his head to squint into the darkness. He can just make out the rippling of his parachute sailing downstream. 

Oh well. It wasn’t like he was planning to jump out of _another_ plane. 

He’d managed to keep the gun above the water, but the transponder seems to be a loss. The map, luckily, is made of a high-quality paper that doesn’t easily shred when soaked, so Steve spends a few minutes carefully unfolding it and using the compass to direct his path. 

Waterlogged, possibly sporting a couple of broken ribs, it takes Steve at least an hour on foot before he comes to the compound. 

A glimpse through the trees—that’s where Bucky is, that’s where the Nazis are, this is where he could _die_ —and then the last of a convoy is passing him by and Steve jumps into the last truck before any of those thoughts can properly take root. 

Inside the truck are two Nazis. 

His first fight. 

He can do this. He _has_ to do this. 

The two men descend on him, and when he punches one of them straight in the sternum—a move he’d practiced with Bucky a lifetime ago, a move that had only ever resulted in bruises on his knuckles and not a whole lot else—and the guy goes flying back against the side of the truck. 

The second guy tries to grab his gun, but Steve grabs back, twists his arm up and out to make him let go, and his grip is so strong that he feels the other guy's arm snap like a twig. The man howls and lurches back, and Steve thinks _Oh I can just—_ and sweeps his legs out from under him, and the guy goes down instantly.

Steve had only ever imagined it in vague terms, what would happen if a guy who could break tables and crush guns with his bare hands, decided to fight.

Now he knows.

The first one comes back in a rush, but without any active thought on his own part, Steve blocks the first blow and delivers his own right back, and instead of a brief grunt like he would have gotten in the alleyways of Brooklyn, the guy hits the floor, and the sound of his skull against the corrugated floor has an ominously wet quality to it. 

It occurs to Steve, in a newly visceral way, that he is going to have to kill these men. 

They are the enemy, and they can't be left alive. 

This is what war _is_. 

Part of his mind reels, but it's the same part that had screamed before he jumped out of the airplane, that had frozen at the thought of dying when he found the compound, so he does what he's done all night and ignores it. He grabs his shield, kneels over the closest Nazi, and drives the shield down into the man's face with one hard blow. 

There's a crunching noise. 

To his left, the one with the broken arm is creaking to life, fumbling for something at his hip, and Steve feels a flash of panic— _He's going to kill me_ —and then he's slamming the shield down again. The soldier stops moving. The only sound in the caravan is Steve's breathing. 

He sits there on his knees between the two dead bodies, as the truck continues on, its driver oblivious. 

Steve swallows once, twice. Turns his head to the side and vomits. Wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his stupid spangly sleeve. Swallows again.

This is war, he tells himself. 

  
  


Steve hears Bucky before he sees him. He’s deep in the bowels of the compound, running down darkened hallways with his shield clutched in one hand and a gun in the other. Floors above him, he can hear the sounds of rioting from the men that he'd freed. It seems like hours ago that one of them had told him about Bucky, about the isolation ward, and Steve's been running ever since. 

He's not scared. He's _not._ He just has to keep moving until he finds Bucky. There are no other options. 

His feet seem to be moving faster, though, his breaths coming more rapid. He can't escape the fact that he's running out of corridors to check, of what it will mean once he's searched everywhere and there's still no Bucky, of the incinerator he'd found one floor up that hadn't quite managed to finish off some of the thicker bones of the corpses it had been fed, a pile of blackened femurs and mandibles, and if Bucky was—

Steve stops that train of thought. 

Bucky is somewhere here, alive, and Steve will find him. 

The building trembles with an explosion from above. Steve hopes it took some Nazis with it. He hopes the soldiers up there are fucking _obliterating_ the Nazis. 

Another explosion, and Steve almost misses it. 

"...five five seven zero…"

He stops in his tracks. 

It only takes a second to confirm. He'd know that voice _anywhere_. 

Steve moves four steps forward, but the voice gets fainter in that direction, and instead he doubles back cautiously. Ten steps before, there's a stairwell, and when he opens the door, Bucky’s voice is clearer than ever. Steve practically flies up the steps.

"...three two five five.." 

The hallway he spills out into is one he hasn’t seen before, though he thought he’d covered everything on this floor. At the very end, a man in a trench coat darts out, stuffing papers into a satchel, and as soon as he sees Steve he sprints away. 

That’s okay. 

The 107th can have him. Steve has other priorities right now. 

He follows the sound of the voice into a room that is some sort of terrible fusion of Dr. Erskine’s lab and an operating room. Bucky is strapped to the table in the very center. 

“Bucky.” 

The name escapes without any conscious thought on Steve’s part, the same way his feet move toward the table. 

Bucky goes quiet. 

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve says, up close now, but Bucky’s staring at the ceiling and he looks so thin, so pale, there are _bruises—_ “Bucky, hey, hey, look at me, it’s Steve, you’re okay—” He’s ripping the straps off with his bare hands, tearing through leather like wet paper, but he’s never felt so powerless. “Bucky. Bucky _look_ at me.” 

Slowly, Bucky blinks, once, twice, then a bunch more as his face comes to life, as his eyes hazily lock on to Steve. 

Steve rips the last strap free without breaking his gaze. 

“...Steve?” Bucky slurs, squinting. 

“It’s me,” Steve says, and he doesn’t give two shits about the way his voice cracks. 

Bucky’s _alive_. 

Bucky’s face splits into a dopey grin, head lolling to the side a little. “ _Stevie_.” 

“C’mon, we gotta go,” Steve says, and grabs his arm, pulling him up. 

Bucky is loose-limbed and pliant, but the grin is fading. “Go?” 

Steve manhandles him into sitting up on the edge of the table, grabs Bucky by the shoulders to set him upright, but when lets go to haul him forward by the waist, Bucky tips forward into his chest, weak as a kitten. Steve’s heart clenches. 

He is going to kill _so many Nazis_. 

“Buck. Hey,” he says gently, bringing one hand around to cup the back of Bucky’s head, but then—

Then Bucky stiffens. His shoulders straighten and his hands push weakly at Steve’s waist, until his head swings up and he stares at Steve, looking only a little muzzy now but a lot suspicious. 

“You’re not Steve,” he accuses. 

“I _am_ Steve,” Steve says. 

“You’re—an Alpha,” Bucky says, eyes focusing and unfocusing mid-sentence. 

Steve opens his mouth, but the denial lodges in his throat a moment too long. 

“...No,” he says weakly. “I’m not.” 

Bucky shakes his head. “How… fuckin’ dumb do you think I am?” 

“No, listen, Bucky,” Steve says urgently, and tries again to haul him to his feet, but Bucky pushes him away. “Stop! It’s me, I swear to God it’s me, but I don’t have time to explain, we have to get out of here.” 

“Fuck off,” Bucky says, trying to push away but there’s no strength to it, and Steve holds him in place easily. “Fuck off, let me go, you fuckin’ Nazi—”

Goddamn him for being so fucking _stubborn_. 

“Bucky, it’s _me_ ,” Steve pleads, trying and failing to meet his eyes. “I swear, on—on Becca. Your ma. My ma.” 

Bucky aims a knee to his groin that Steve just barely dodges. 

Steve is going to knock him upside the head and _carry_ him out. 

“Lemme _go_ ,” Bucky demands. 

"Bucky—" 

"Fuck you—" 

" _Bucky—_ "

"Get off me, you fucking—" 

“Bucky, stop it, just—look,” Steve snaps, yanking at the dog tag chain around his neck, thrusting it out for inspection, so Bucky can _see_ , see the two dog tags that declare him to be Steven Rogers, see that next to them is _—_ “ _Look_ ,” Steve orders. 

A small steel padlock, with two silver grommets on the shackle, edged in fraying white satin. 

Steve had had to cut the lock off the satin collar, that day Agent Carter had brought him back to their apartment, because Bucky had already taken the key off to Europe. He’s been carrying it with him since he left for Boston, all those months ago. 

Bucky blinks at it for a long moment, and then fumbles for the chain around his own neck. 

Outside, there are more explosions, and cheers that sound distinctly American. 

“We don’t have time—” Steve starts, but stops when Bucky pulls out his own dog tags, and the little silver key strung alongside them. Steve catches a glimpse of the tiny text etched on the side, the name and address they’d had engraved on it the week before Bucky left. A lifetime ago. 

One shaking hand grabs the lock, and the other slides the key into place. 

The lock snicks open. 

Bucky’s head jerks up, staring at Steve with wide eyes. 

Steve nods. 

“What the hell,” Bucky says. 

“It’s a long story,” Steve says, and then he manhandles Bucky into standing. This time Bucky moves with him, unquestioning. Steve reaches between them and clicks the lock back shut, yanks the key out, and then turns so that Bucky’s arm is slung over his shoulder. He wastes no time dragging him toward the door. Bucky’s feet scramble for purchase. 

“What _happened_ to you?”

“Mainly, Howard Stark,” Steve answers. 

“ _The_ Howard Stark? _Flying car_ Howard Stark?” 

“I don’t think he actually ever got it to fly." 

"How did Howard Stark make you an Alpha?" 

"Not an Alpha." 

"Really? Because you smell like one, you _look_ like one, and I swear you're even bossier than you were—"

But the rest of his words are drowned out by a series of deafening explosions that send them stumbling into a wall, and when they burst into the main hall seconds later it's engulfed in flames. The explosions haven't stopped. They're going off one by one, moving in a neat line down the compound from left to right—a self destruct sequence, headed right toward them. 

_Up,_ Steve thinks, and he pulls Bucky onto a catwalk, eyes on a door on the other side of the floor, which he thinks leads to the fire escape he remembers seeing on his way in. If he can just get them over there—

But then a voice, a thick German accent, calls out, "Captain America!" 

And that's when Steve learns that Senator Brandt was wrong, all those months ago. 

He is _not_ all that survives of Dr. Erskine's work. 

  
  


Steve and Bucky spill out onto the fire escape, a wave of heat at their backs, but they can’t stop there. Steve grabs Bucky’s hand and pulls him forward, pushes him ahead, and starts herding him down the rickety staircase. Bucky slows down when they hit the bottom, but Steve grabs his hand and drags him forward to take cover behind a tank just as the windows blow out. 

Bucky collapses back against the tank, panting. “That guy,” he says, staring up at Steve. “His _face_.” 

“I know,” Steve says. 

“What the _hell_.” 

“I know.” 

Bucky shakes his head. 

Steve hears footsteps and grabs the shield off his back, steps up onto the skirt of the tank as he pulls out his gun with his free hand. Running in their direction is a soldier, her own gun slung over her back, a radio in hand, and as soon as Steve catches the swastika on her arm, he raises the gun and—

 _This is war_. 

He shoots. 

She drops to the ground, and doesn’t move again. 

Steve tears his eyes away, and surveys the grounds of the compound. It looks radically different than it had when he’d first entered maybe an hour ago—the quiet, organized collection of vehicles and supply crates now a blazing ruin, a large swath of the fence plowed down, possibly by a tank, bodies strewn left and right. If Steve squints he can see one or two with tiny American flags, but the majority have red bands on their arms. 

The 107th left their mark. 

The grounds aren’t completely deserted, though; half a dozen soldiers are roaming the wreckage, guns at the ready for any Allied stragglers, and there's another soldier in the center, on a radio. Steve looks in the opposite direction, toward the rear of the compound, and sees a small cargo truck driving out a back exit. 

From inside the building, there's a thunderous crash, and an enormous cloud of smoke billows up from the ruined roof. 

Steve ducks down again, jumping off the tank to where Bucky is slumped. 

Bucky watches him circle around. 

“We gotta go,” Steve murmurs. 

Bucky nods, and takes the hand Steve offers to haul himself up. “Where’s your unit?” 

Steve blinks at him, their faces now inches apart. For the first time he realizes that he and Bucky are the same height, now.

“Steve.” 

“I don’t have a unit,” Steve says. 

Bucky’s face does a funny sort of spasm thing. 

“Bucky, I’m sure if they had the resources they would have sent—” 

“You’re here _alone?_ ” Bucky hisses. 

Oh. 

Well. 

"I'm with _you_ ," Steve says.

Bucky looks pained. And ungrateful. 

"Come on," Steve says, and tugs him away from the tank, away from the handful of remaining Nazis. 

There's a dead body a few feet away, and he ducks down long enough to grab the gun off him, rips the strap of ammo off his shoulder, and hands the lot of it over to Bucky. They creep over fallen soldiers and debris, take cover behind an overturned cargo truck, and dart out toward the fence when the front wall of the compound collapses and provides a handy distraction. 

They get to the chain link fence, and Bucky looks all the way up to the top—a good thirty feet up—and says, "Steve, I don't think—" but Steve grabs the fence just next to where it's welded into a post and _rips_. 

"Okay then," says Bucky. 

  
  


Steve practically drags Bucky through the woods, weaving through trees and down rocky hillsides, loosely following the direction of the road so he keeps course for the clearing he’d told the 107th to rendezvous at. Bucky’s lungs are whistling in the quiet of the night, and Steve’s own ribs are aching from his earlier fall into the river, but there’s a panic thrumming beneath his skin that drives him onward. 

He needs to get away from that place. He needs to get _Bucky_ away. 

They get pretty far—at least half a mile, maybe further—with Steve crashing through underbrush and Bucky stumbling along behind him, until they hit loose rock on the side of a hill, and Steve loses his footing just a second before Bucky does, and the next thing he knows his shoulder is slamming into a tree, winding him. A beat later Bucky slams into his other side like a ton of bricks, and Steve grabs on hard to keep him upright.

His heart is racing, and his lungs won't open up enough to get a breath in, but for this moment at least they are safe. 

Five seconds, Steve tells himself. They can take five seconds.

Bucky is wheezing against him. The weight of him is simultaneously reassuring and not nearly enough, and Steve pulls him in closer, presses his forehead into Bucky’s shoulder so hard it nearly hurts. He breathes in deep gulps of Bucky’s scent, revels in the solid heat of his body in the cold night air.

“Steve,” Bucky breathes, and his hand latches onto the back of Steve’s neck. “ _Steve_.” 

Steve holds him tight, so tight, and his breaths start to come faster. Bucky is here. Bucky is _here_. 

After all this—not just the freefall from the plane through enemy fire, the feeling of skulls caving in beneath his bare hands, the stench of burning flesh, not just the pure terror that’s been driving him forward all night long, but all those months before, isolated on the road, unsure if Bucky was even still alive—after all this, to have Bucky here in his arms… 

It’s everything. 

“Hey,” Bucky says, squeezing the back of his neck. “Hey, I gotta breathe.” 

“Okay,” Steve says—tells himself, really—and forces his grip to relax a little. He slows his breathing. 

“Shit.” 

Steve makes himself to lift his head, and stares at the dark shadows of Bucky’s face. “Are you okay?” 

Bucky laughs, a little hysterically. “Am _I_ okay?” 

Steve reaches up to cup his face, and has a sick little surge of dissonance when his hand stretches from jaw to hairline, too big, too _much_. 

He pushes it down and focuses on Bucky, here and alive in front of him. “Bucky,” Steve says, just because he can. 

“Shit,” Bucky says again. “Shit. Steve. Are you sure this is real?” 

“It’s real. I swear it’s real.” 

“I dreamed about you savin’ me, sometimes.” 

“Like this?” 

“Not like this.” 

No. Who would ever have thought they'd end up here? 

"We gotta keep going," Steve tells him, without moving an inch. "The rest of your unit, they're supposed to be waiting up ahead." 

Bucky goes still against him. "The rest of my unit?" 

"Yeah." 

"You saved them too?" 

Steve shakes his head, feeling a rush of hot shame as he remembers tossing the keys and his map at the first soldier he'd freed and then abandoning them in favor of Bucky. He doesn't regret it, not when it means Bucky here and alive, but those men and women who had died fighting their way out of the compound—those lives are on him. The price of Bucky. 

"Steve?" 

"They saved themselves," Steve says. 

Bucky exhales, and Steve knows without seeing that he’s rolling his eyes. "I'm sure you had _something_ to do with it, Rogers." 

Steve doesn't reply. He doesn't want to think about it anymore. 

"Come on," he says instead, letting go of Bucky and viciously suppressing the urge to grab him back and never let go. "We should—we need to go." 

Bucky inhales, and takes a step back. "Okay." 

"Okay," Steve says, and then starts off into the woods again.

  
  


It’s approximately four o’clock in the morning in enemy territory in northern Italy, and Bucky keeps serving him Looks from across the back of the caravan. Looks that Steve has known since childhood. Looks that say _We Are Going to Have a Discussion, Steven_. 

And Steve plans to have it with him. Really. 

It’s not like Steve _invented_ all these injured soldiers that need treatment, just to delay explanations. Truthfully, he’d more been trying to escape the barrage of people who kept trying to thank him for saving their lives—the sight of a lone medic struggling to splint a broken arm had been a rescue beacon, and Falsworth, the medic, was genuinely grateful for another pair of hands, and also for the tiny first aid kit Agent Carter had made Steve bring. 

“I wasn’t aware Captain America was a doctor,” he’d remarked, after Steve had expertly drained and dressed several infected wounds, and helped to set a broken finger. 

Steve had looked up, startled. “I’m not.” 

“Well, you certainly know what you’re doing, mate.” 

He had very nearly opened his mouth to tell the man he was actually a nurse—but Alphas, of course, weren’t nurses. 

“My mother was a nurse,” Steve had said instead, and Bucky had given him another Look from where he was slicing up a section of canvas to make bandages. 

The five packets of sulfanilamide in the first aid kit were quickly used up, as were the eight tablets of sulfadiazine. Steve’s kit had also included a tourniquet, which they haven’t had to use yet, and a single tube of morphine, which every single soldier so far has refused to take. 

The back of the caravan is lit by a single, swinging kerosene lamp that flickers with every bump in the road, and even after tossing out the thirty-something bags of cement that had been occupying the caravan previously, conditions are still cramped. All told, it’s less than an ideal setup with little to no supplies, but they’re making do. 

Steve and Falsworth are wrapping up a second degree burn on a cranky corporal’s arm when the caravan comes to an abrupt stop that sends them all reeling forward, and the kerosene lamp whacks against the canvas wall so hard that the flame goes out. 

“Son of a bitch!” the corporal swears, and Steve guiltily relaxes his grip on her burnt arm. “ _Shit_ , that hurt, what the hell.” 

“Hold on, I can’t see a bloody thing,” Falsworth says. 

Steve’s eyes have already adjusted to the sudden darkness, though, and he quickly takes over the wrapping. 

“Goldstein,” a voice says from just outside the caravan, the same one that had followed the corporal into the van in the first place with an irritable _Shut up and let them look at your damn arm, Goldstein_. “We stopped for water, there’s a river. You want some?” 

“I’ll go get it myself, once Doc‘n’Captain Spangles here finish mummifying my fucking arm,” Goldstein snaps. 

Falsworth scowls, but Steve prefers it to the rapturous gratitude he’s mostly been subjected to. Anyway, it’s not the worst nickname anyone has come up with for him, not by a long shot. 

Steve finishes tying the bandage off just as Bucky gets the lamp lit again, and he blinks at the sudden orange glow. 

“Thanks,” Goldstein mutters, and clambers out of the caravan a second later. 

Falsworth starts climbing out after her without missing a beat. “Come on, gents,” he says, glancing back. “If the Nazis didn’t kill us, then a spot of beaver fever sure as hell won’t do us in.” 

Steve glances at Bucky, who says, “We’re good here.” 

Falsworth shrugs and hops out of the back of the caravan, letting the canvas fall back into place after him, and then they’re alone. 

“So,” Bucky says, wasting no time. “Captain America.” 

“Yeah,” Steve says. 

“That’s new.” 

“Yeah.” 

“A letter mighta been nice.” 

“It’s… complicated,” Steve says, stomach twisting.

“How long?” 

Steve takes in a deep breath, and stares at Bucky. In the dim lighting, with his hair unkempt and his face smudged with dirt and soot, he looks older and more tired than Steve has ever seen him. He lets out the breath of air he’d just taken in, and feels every one of his own twenty-five years, right down to his bones. 

“Before I answer,” Steve says carefully, “you have to know that everything I tell you is top secret. Like, for real, US government secrets. You can’t tell _anyone_.” 

“Jesus Christ, Steve,” Bucky says, closing his eyes.

“It happened about three months ago. Give or take. I started working for a military lab, after you left, and there was an experiment and it went… very wrong.” 

“You let them _experiment_ on you?” 

“No, I—there was an accident.” Steve swallows, and remembers the feeling of a bullet through the chest. “I was just helping one of the scientists, this was never supposed to happen, but. There was a serum, meant for a soldier, but then we were attacked and I was exposed and it… it happened.” 

“You became a huge ol’ Alpha,” Bucky says. 

Steve doesn’t think he fully suppresses the flinch, because Bucky’s expression immediately switches to remorse. 

“Steve—” 

“I’m not an Alpha,” Steve says, steadily. “That… came later. I’ll get to it. But yeah, the serum made me a foot taller and—strong, and fast, and everything else you could ever want from a perfect soldier, because that’s what it was supposed to do. Make a super soldier. It was supposed to make a whole army of super soldiers, actually, but after the attack, everything was destroyed and the only thing left of the whole experiment was me.” 

“You’re a … super soldier,” Bucky repeats, slowly. 

Steve shrugs. 

“Okay.” 

“They didn’t know what to do with me, at first,” Steve says, which is a rather... kind summary of the interrogation he’d undergone. “They were gonna keep me locked up, I think, to study me. But then Howard Stark had an idea—” 

“Wait, _the_ Howard Stark?”

“Yep.” 

“You _met_ him?” 

“Yeah. He’s… kinda rude, actually,” Steve tells him. “I mean he’s saved my life at least twice, and I guess yours too, now, by extension. But also kind of an asshole.” 

“But he’s a _genius_.” 

“Yeah. He knows.”

Bucky snorts, more than a little disbelieving.

“Anyway, I guess when he’s not making flying cars and weapons, he also does… Chemistry? Medicines? That RutNix you got at boot camp, that’s his too.” 

“No kidding,” Bucky says, eyebrows going up. 

“So he got the idea to make me something similar, but instead of suppressing ruts, it just changes which pheromones I produce. So I could smell like an Alpha.” 

“And why the hell did you need to smell like an Alpha?” 

“Because no one wants an Omega super soldier, Buck.” 

Bucky stares at him for a full five seconds. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” 

Steve shrugs. “It worked.” 

“And now they’ve got you over here, fighting in a fucking war. Jesus, Steve.” 

“Actually, no one _wanted_ me to fight in the war,” Steve says, with a bitterness that surprises him. “I have a whole security team that’s been with me through my tour; they barely let me take a piss unsupervised. I’m not supposed to get within a hundred feet of a Nazi. But I heard about you being taken, and they were just—they were gonna leave you to die, Buck. Missing in action. So I did what I had to do to come get you myself, and I don’t regret a single second of it, because you’re here and you’re alive.” 

Bucky runs a hand over his face, and says nothing. 

They’re only four feet apart, each propped against the low steel walls of the caravan. Bucky has one leg out and the other one bent, one arm wrapped loosely around that knee, casual as you please. Steve is curled up knees-to-chest small but not small enough. He wants to unfold. He wants Bucky’s warmth at his side. 

“I don’t know what they told Becca,” Steve says, into the silence. “She probably thinks I’m dead.” 

“I got your postcards,” Bucky replies, still not looking at him. “With all the little drawings. I never understood why you didn’t just reply to my letters like a normal fucking person, but I still kept all of ‘em.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve says. 

It’s quiet for another long moment, and then all of a sudden Bucky pushes forward and comes to Steve, settling on his knees before him. Steve watches him, hope unfurling in his chest. He’s expecting words, but instead Bucky reaches out silently and pulls on Steve’s dog tags until they come out, two silver rectangles and the steel padlock with the little grommets still attached. The frayed satin edges glint in the lamp light. 

_STEVEN G ROGERS A  
_ _32550021 T43 43 S B_

_P_

“What the hell does the G stand for?” 

“Grant,” Steve says. 

“What, like the fuckin’ president?” 

“My birthday is also the 4th of July, now.” 

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” 

Steve laughs, without humor. “I’m an All American Hero. My favorite food is apple pie, I punch Adolf Hitler, and I go to a nice Protestant church every Sunday.”

“Steve, you’re allergic to apples.” 

“Not anymore, actually. I really like Macouns.” 

Bucky blinks. “No more allergies?” 

“Nope.” 

“Wait—so, no more asthma?” Bucky asks, and Steve shakes his head. Bucky starts to smile. “No arrhythmia? Steve, no more low blood pressure, no—” Bucky reaches out and snaps his fingers next to Steve’s left ear. 

"Perfect hearing on both sides,” Steve confirms. 

Bucky’s face is like the sun coming out. “Steve this is… amazing. This is incredible.”

“Yep,” Steve says, starting to smile just a little. 

“No more nebulizers, no epinephrine shots, no more fainting—” 

“I never _fainted_ ,” Steve objects. 

“Steve,” Bucky says, voice suddenly thick with emotion. He reaches up and cups the side of Steve’s face with one hand, studying Steve like he’s never seen him before. “You’re _healthy_.” 

“Yeah,” Steve says, a little overwhelmed by how _happy_ Bucky is. 

“Steve,” Bucky says softly, and his hand moves to wrap itself around the back of Steve’s neck, warm and possessive. “If—if this serum stuff made you tall and strong and all… Alpha-lookin’, I don’t give two shits about any of it if it made you healthy, too.” 

Steve averts his eyes. “It’s not just bein’ tall and strong, though. There’s other stuff, things—” 

“Baby, I don’t care if your dick fell off and you grew extra hands on your butt.” 

“I—” Steve chokes, and then bursts out laughing. “ _What?_ ” 

“ _Steve_ ,” Bucky says, and then he leans in and captures his mouth mid-laugh, pressing him back against the wall of the caravan and _claiming_ him. 

And this, at least, is the same. Their noses press together at exactly the same spot, Steve knows the hot taste of Bucky’s mouth as well as anything, and the way their teeth clack together for a second before they adjust the angle _just so_ , the way that Bucky pulls back and Steve follows him, chases his mouth across the gap, until hands cup his face and ground him, keep him held in place. 

“We’re gonna grow old together,” Bucky whispers against his lips, forehead to forehead, nose to nose.

“We were always gonna grow old together, Bucky,” Steve says. 

“No,” Bucky says, in an uneven voice, and his hands tremble where they’re pressed to Steve’s face. “No, we weren’t. I knew it and I loved you anyway, Steve, but you were always gonna—you were gonna leave me behind. Every winter, I’d think, ‘This is it. This is the last one.’ And I knew when I left for the war, I knew maybe it was the last time I’d ever—”

Steve lets his legs fall to the floor and he pulls Bucky forward between them, wrapping him up as tightly as he can. “I’m not leaving you,” he murmurs, pressing his face into Bucky’s greasy locks and inhaling anyway because beneath the grime and rank the scent is still Bucky. “Not now. Not ever. We’re in it ‘til the end of the line, just like you always said.” 

Bucky takes a few shuddering breaths against him, and squeezes him tight. 

Steve hugs him back, hard, and tries not to think about whatever punishment awaits him, when they return to base camp. Court martial. Back to the tour. Back to the laboratory, back in his _shackles_. 

“We’ll figure it out,” he tells Bucky. Tells himself. “It’ll be okay.” 

Bucky huffs. “I leave you alone for five fuckin’ minutes...” 

“Shut up,” Steve says, and closes his eyes, inhaling the scent of his Alpha once more. He wants to hold Bucky like this forever. 

But outside, he can hear the din of voices growing louder as more people return from the river. The excitement of escape still hasn’t worn off, and people are laughing, joking, and a group wanders past singing enthusiastically about Hitler only having one testicle. The three other caravan engines turn on, and he hears the tank begin to grind forward. 

Eventually, Steve hears Falsworth’s distinct British accent, and he pushes Bucky up. “They’re back,” he whispers, scrambling back to his position. “They’re back, they’re back, get up.” 

They’re back to opposite sides of the caravan with only a second to spare when Falsworth pulls the canvas door open and swings a leg over, announcing, “I’m back! Brought a friend. Get up here, Jones.” 

He’s followed by a dark-skinned woman, whose face seems vaguely familiar. She freezes halfway into the caravan, staring at Steve. 

“Holy shit!” she says. 

“Yes, yes,” Falsworth says brusquely, already pulling several strips of cotton from the pile Bucky had made. “He’s the Star Spangled Man in a Van. Medical treatment first, fawning later, please. Sit down and let’s look at that leg.” 

“You’re the one who got us out of those cells,” Jones says, slowly coming into the caravan. “You saved us.” 

“I just had the key,” Steve says, flushing a little. “You guys did the rest.” 

“No, I was there, I saw you. _Thank you_.” 

“I really didn’t—” 

Bucky kicks him. “Just say you’re welcome, you punk.” 

“Let me do something to actually earn it, first,” Steve replies, and moves closer to Jones. “You’ve got an infected wound?” 

Behind him, Bucky heaves a sigh. 

  
  


They stop again, after the sun has risen, after two of the caravans ran out of gas and had to be abandoned on the side of the road. There’s a creek this time, barely deep enough to cup your hands into to collect water from. A group of soldiers have spotted Steve, and are currently belting out an earnest but rather tuneless rendition of _God Bless America_ , with some… improvisations. 

“Steve, for God’s sake—”

“ _—maaaaan that I looooove—_ ” 

“It’s embarrassing,” Steve mutters. 

“— _stood beside us, and guided us—”_

“You saved their lives, what do you want them to do, call for your arrest?” Bucky hisses. 

It’s sarcasm, but the words still land heavy and sick in the pit of Steve’s stomach. 

The US army camp is only seventeen miles away, and Steve knows that every step forward is another toward the consequences of his own actions. He doesn’t regret what he did. Bucky had been a prisoner of war, had been strapped down to a table and _tortured_ , and there is no law Steve wouldn’t have broken to get him back. There are no punishments they can bring down upon him that will make him wish he’d left Bucky to rot in that factory. 

But now, on the other side of rescue, Steve pictures what Bucky’s face will look like if he’s led away in handcuffs on their return. What Bucky will do, if Steve is sent back to that lab in New Jersey. 

Steve had promised him, _til the end of the line._

Trouble is, the line looks like it’s about seventeen miles away, and they’re marching straight for it, slow and steady. 

  
  


Half a day later, they’re standing in front of Colonel Phillips, in the same base camp Steve had started at only yesterday, but instead of an entourage of showgirls he now has a literal army at his back. A total of three of their four caravans had run out of gas, leaving only one plus the tank to carry the most wounded and exhausted of their crew. Steve’s feet are wet and freezing, he hasn’t slept in forty-something hours, and Bucky’s shoulder against his is like an anchor. Bringing these soldiers back to camp may very well be the last thing he ever does as a free man. 

“Sir,” he says, eye to eye with the highest ranking American military officer in Italy. 

Colonel Phillips stares right back at him. 

If he’s waiting for an apology, he isn’t going to get one. 

“You know, I just signed off on your KIA notice,” Colonel Phillips says, stone-faced. 

“Sorry for the trouble, sir,” Steve replies. He jerks his head toward the assembled soldiers behind him. “I’m afraid you’ve got four hundred other notices to revoke, too.” 

The Colonel’s eyes flick to where men are still pouring into the camp in droves. Something in his eyes reminds Steve of the flood of emotion that had left him near-speechless when he’d first come into the clearing, when the sheer number of lives _saved_ had really hit him. 

Four hundred people, back from the dead.

“I expect some help with the paperwork,” the Colonel mutters, and then stomps off. 

Bucky yells something, and the cheer that goes up is enough to nearly deafen Steve all over again. 

  
  


Agent Carter finds him, somehow, amongst the fray. She’s as stern as ever, arms crossed over her chest, and the sight of her gives Steve an overwhelming surge of fondness. This woman is the reason he got out of that lab in New York, and she’s the reason he was able to rescue Bucky, and really, _she’s_ the one these soldiers should be singing about. 

“Did we not review how to use a transponder, Captain Rogers?” she demands. 

“Not how to use them after they’ve been underwater,” Steve replies.

Agent Carter raises her eyebrows. 

“I sort of landed in a river,” Steve explains.

Agent Carter closes her eyes for a second, and then smiles like she can’t help herself. 

Steve grins sheepishly. 

“I’ll add it to the lesson plan, next time I’m giving instructions on basic military practices in the back of a plane in the middle of the night,” Agent Carter says, and Steve laughs. Agent Carter scans the crowd of soldiers, and asks, “So which one is yours?” 

Steve turns his head and finds Bucky about six feet away, talking to a giant redheaded man with an impressive mustache. He nods his head. “That one. Without the hat.” 

Agent Carter eyes Bucky speculatively for a moment, before turning back to Steve. “I’m glad you got him back,” she says sincerely. 

“Thank you.” 

She exhales, and stares up at him with an expression that is almost… sad. Eventually, she says, “I’ll find you later. Go sit and have something to eat; you look like shit.” 

Steve barks out a laugh. 

It doesn’t take long for someone to start herding them in various directions—medical tents, showers, and food—and Steve joins Bucky in the migration toward the mess hall. On the way, he’s introduced to the man with the mustache, whose name is apparently Dum Dum. 

“Dum Dum?” Steve asks. 

“It’s actually Timothy Alloysius Caldwell—” 

“Shut the fuck up, Buchanan,” Dum Dum says cheerfully. 

Dum Dum apparently knows Falsworth, the medic Steve had worked with in the back of the caravan, who waves them down just outside the mess hall. They’re not anywhere near the front of the line, so as they inch forward, Steve is also re-introduced to Falsworth’s friend Gabby Jones, who is now accompanied by a few others, including an incongruously displaced Frenchman named Dernier. 

Bucky also knows Dernier, going by the enormous bear hug he gives him on sight. “You _motherfucker_ ,” he says affectionately. “I thought you were dead.” 

Dernier replies with something not in English, to which Bucky says, “I still don’t speak French, asshole.” 

“Tu parles un peu français,” Dernier replies. 

" _Connard,_ ” Bucky says happily. 

Dernier grins. 

“Captain America,” Bucky introduces, gesturing at Steve. 

Dernier nods, and points a thumb at himself. “Captain France.” 

Steve laughs, and salutes him. 

“We need to get you a stupid flag shield, too,” Bucky tells him, and then turns to Steve to explain, “This bastard was chained to me for two weeks. Taught me the whole French national anthem!” 

Eventually they all end up with various tin cans and canteens of water. There are no seats left in the mess hall, so instead Steve finds himself sitting cross-legged in a rough circle on the cold, muddy ground. He stares down at the tins in his hand. One is labeled M-unit, and the other B-unit. 

“There’s an opener on the bottom,” Bucky mutters, though not quietly enough, because to his right Dum Dum starts laughing. 

“Guess they keep Captain America on the A-rations, don’t they?” he says, and though it’s good-natured, Steve still feels himself start to flush. “Welcome to C-rats.” 

“Which may actually contain rats,” Jones adds cheerfully. 

“Notice it just says ‘meat’ on the outside,” Dum Dum agrees, digging into his own with gusto. “Never thought I’d miss them. Goddamn.” 

Falsworth makes a noise of disgust as he opens his tin. 

Steve’s M-tin is indeed labeled “Meat with Vegetable Hash”, and the contents are… well, not the worst thing Steve has ever eaten. He finishes the can in about five minutes flat, and then moves on to the B-tin, which contains five biscuits, some sort of lemon powder, sugar cubes, and a candy. Judging by the discarded pile of lemon powders in the circle, Steve guesses that those are not worth the effort, and he drinks his water plain. 

“You think they saved our stuff?” Jones asks. “I’ve got coffee packets I was saving up, and I’d kill for a hot cup of joe right now.” 

Morita snorts. “You know they already gave your gear to the next fresh face off the boat, and anything extra got slipped into the Staff Sergeant's pockets.” 

“I had a chocolate stash,” Falsworth tells Jones in a commiserating sort of way. “Seven pieces of fudge and a Cadbury bar. I was saving it for my birthday.” 

“Hold up, you Brits are still getting fudge?” Dum Dum demands. “We used to get fudge. Now we get these fuckin’ sugar rocks.” 

“Indeed,” Falsworth says, eyeing his piece of candy with a rather dismal expression. 

“They probably sent, you know—personal stuff. They probably sent that home,” Bucky offers. 

“Oh, _personal stuff_ ,” Dum Dum repeats, and nudges Bucky’s shoulder. 

“Personal stuff?” Steve asks, curious. 

“Cap! You’ve known Barnes for, what, a whole twenty-four hours now, and he hasn’t mentioned his darling Omega bride yet? Barnes! Did those Nazi bastards give you brain damage or what?” 

Bucky looks embarrassed, though extremely determined not to be. “Shut up. I can go more than twenty-four hours without mentioning Steve—” 

“ _Stevie_ ,” Dum Dum mocks, in a dreamy voice. 

“Steve!” Dernier agrees excitedly from across the circle, pointing at Bucky. “Ton amoureux! Du matin au soir, Steve, Steve, Steve.” 

Bucky’s face is going pink, and Steve is hard-pressed not to find it really fucking adorable. 

“Barnes has got a whole collection of… personal stuff,” Dum Dum tells the group, waggling his eyebrows. 

“Oh! Pictures?”

“Naughty letters?” 

“It’s _private_ ,” Bucky snaps. 

“He’s never shared,” Dum Dum says sadly. 

“I’m sure Steve appreciates that,” Steve says loyally, which earns him a few boos, and an incredulous look from Bucky. 

Personally, Steve wants to know exactly what these ‘personal effects’ are. He knows for a fact that he’s never written Bucky an inappropriate letter of any sort, and there are absolutely no pictures of him in any sort of… compromising position. 

“You better send that boy a telegram, Barnes, letting him know you’re still alive,” Dum Dum tells him seriously. “If he’s as good as you say, he’s gonna have a line of Alphas waiting for him, soon as they hear you’re out of the picture.”

“Well,” Bucky hedges, “I might. But I also might’ve exaggerated about how good looking he is, exactly.” 

The circle erupts with laughter. 

“That’s kind of rude,” Steve says, with a frown. 

“Ohhhhh, Captain America thinks you’re _rude_ , Barnes.” 

“Just bein’ honest,” Bucky says, with a hint of a smirk. “Not that nice, either. Ran off all the other Alphas. I was the only one who’d have ‘im, really.” 

Steve struggles to keep his face straight. “If you’re saying things like that, Sergeant Barnes, it doesn’t sound like you’re too much of a prize, either.” 

“He was _privileged_ to marry me—”

“Oh, shut up,” Dum Dum says, wrapping an arm around Bucky’s shoulders. “Don’t listen to him, Cap, tryin’ to be all slick now. Ever since he stepped off the boat it’s been ‘if Steve were here’, and ‘Steve always says’, and ‘this one time with Steve’. The man’s _crazy_ about his Omega.” 

Steve grins, and Bucky looks resigned to death by mortification. 

“I think that’s very sweet, actually,” Steve tells him. 

“Yeah,” Bucky mutters. “Sweet.” 

  
  


It isn’t long afterward that Steve is pulled into a tent with the Colonel, several other officials, and Agent Carter. He recounts his actions step by step, carefully reframed to exclude Bucky from appearing as his primary objective, but everyone seems more concerned with what he remembers about the weapons factory rather than what he did inside of it. Steve sketches out the strange weapons he had seen being made, and diagrams of the factory layout as best he can remember. He’s impressed with even himself when he reproduces a fairly detailed map he’d seen on a wall, with locations of other weapons factories. 

The whole time, everyone watches him with rapt attention, nodding in response to his statements, and in the corner a man is frantically transcribing his every word. When Steve says, “No, there was no evidence of the Russians,” no one replies with, “But are you _sure?_ ” He keeps waiting for suspicion and scorn, but it never comes. 

At the end of it, Colonel Philips shakes his hand, and that’s when Steve’s suspicions are confirmed. 

“They don’t know, do they?” he asks Agent Carter, outside of the tent. 

“No,” Agent Carter replies. After a pause, she says, “Let’s go somewhere more private, shall we?”

Steve nods. 

The night air is frigid as they walk through the silent camp—Steve isn’t sure where they’re headed, exactly, but he hopes it isn’t too far. He’d washed and changed clothes earlier, but his feet still ache, a headache is throbbing at his temples, hunger gnaws at his stomach, and Bucky is somewhere in a tent about to spend the night without him. 

Eventually, they stop at the very edge of the camp, right up against the line of brush that marks the start of the forest and the giant trees that block out the dim glow of the moon. 

“They don’t know about you,” Agent Carter confirms. “None of them have the clearance, and more to the point, it doesn’t actually matter.” 

“It doesn’t _matter?_ ” Steve repeats. 

“Does it?” 

Steve stares at her, incredulous and entirely too exhausted to follow. “Yes?” 

“Captain,” Agent Carter says, “whatever gender they think you are, it doesn’t change who you are as a person. They may give you the benefit of the doubt because they believe you’re an Alpha, but... that doesn’t mean you deserve it less for being an Omega.” 

“But—Agent Carter, I _am_ an Omega.” 

“And how does it make you any different from an Alpha?” 

“I—” 

Steve stops short, a dozen stereotypes rising and falling from his tongue. He’s always believed that all genders were equal, were _same_ , but it’s impossible to articulate what exactly feels wrong about pretending to be something he’s not. All he knows is that when Colonel Phillips shook his hand, strong and firm, Alpha to Alpha, it made his stomach turn over. 

“What matters is how they perceive you, because _that_ is what dictates how they treat you,” Agent Carter says slowly. She shakes her head, and tugs on a perfect victory curl. “Do you think I do my hair and makeup every day for fun?” 

Steve had never been any sort of fashionable Omega, but he’d always assumed that those sort of things _were_ generally done for fun. 

“I may not be an Omega, but being a woman is not an insignificant disadvantage either, especially in the military. If lipstick and curls get men to pay attention to me, then I take ten minutes out of my day to make sure I look pretty,” Agent Carter says. 

“But you’re also smart,” Steve argues. “And strong, and resourceful, and you—you have everything else to go with it. You’re not just _pretty_.” 

“And you, Steve Rogers, are brave, and kind, and loyal to a fault. It wasn’t _muscle_ that sent you on that rescue mission.” 

Steve knows that. He _knows_ that this body is just a vehicle, just a casing for the important things on the inside. 

But he can’t help but think it’s not the same, because he doubts that after Agent Carter puts her makeup on every morning, she feels sick when she looks in the mirror. 

“I asked you, when we first met, what would happen if I gave you a gun instead of a broom,” Agent Carter tells him, and for one terrible moment Steve is pulled back to that interrogation room—chained up, terrified, pleading his innocence over and over—and then he’s back in Italy, standing on his own two feet, in a captain’s uniform with a gun hanging heavy from his hip. “Now,” Agent Carter continues, “we know.” 

Steve stares at her. 

“You saved four hundred lives, unasked,” Agent Carter says, with a small smile. “You’re a hero.” 

The shame is immediate and terrible. 

“That wasn’t how it happened,” Steve says, averting his eyes. “What I said in there—Agent Carter, you know I was really only there for Bucky. I only found those other soldiers because I was looking for him, and as soon as they told me where he was, I ran off to find him. I didn’t help them escape. I didn’t help them fight their way out. I tossed them the keys to their cells and I ran away without a second thought.” 

“That doesn’t change the fact that if you hadn’t decided to go on a suicide mission in the first place, all of those people would still be in that factory—would have _died_ in that factory.” 

Steve swallows. “It was… just the right timing. Luck. That doesn’t mean I deserve to be called a hero.”

“That isn’t your call to make,” Agent Carter replies. 

Steve exhales, frustrated. “I don’t like it.” 

“Too bad. It’s happened, and there’s very little you’re going to do to change anyone’s mind. What you _should_ be worrying about is what you’re going to do next.” 

“What do you mean?” 

"You know what I mean, Captain Rogers.” 

Steve does. It’s been percolating in the back of his mind ever since it became clear that he wasn’t to be arrested or sent back to the lab. 

What next? 

Go back to the tour, or stay and fight? Which does he want to do?

“I... don’t know,” Steve says honestly. 

Agent Carter nods. 

“What would you do? If you were in my place?” Steve asks. 

“Well, I wouldn’t go back on tour,” Agent Carter says. “And I’d burn every last pair of those damn tights.” 

“They _are_ pretty itchy,” Steve admits, and Agent Carter laughs. “Hey. Do me a favor?” 

Agent Carter raises her eyebrows. 

“Call me Steve. Please.” 

“Only if you call me Peggy,” Agent Carter replies. 

Peggy. 

Steve has to take a moment to decide if it suits her. He wonders if Margaret was too stuffy, too _plain_ for a woman in the military, and if Peggy is just as much of a ruse as her red lipstick or her perfect curls. 

He hopes not. 

“I can do that,” he says, and sticks out a hand. “Nice to meet you, Peggy.” 

She grins back at him as they shake hands. “Nice to meet you, too, Steve.”

  
  


The next morning, Steve is awoken by the cloud of smoke and carp that is his tour manager, Velma. Between puffs of her cigarette, she informs him that the press has gotten a hold of the story of his rescue mission, and there’s a correspondent traveling from Cremona to interview him tomorrow for the full details. Pictures will be taken. She then outlines further schedule changes, and the possibility of a new press tour, with also possible award ceremonies, all with frequent digressions about the misery that is European living. 

“—can’t believe people _live_ like this, over here. Do you know what I had for breakfast? Same thing I had for supper. Fuckin’ meat an’ beans. The showers are broke, so where am I supposed to bathe, the fuckin’ river? Who am I, John the fuckin’ Baptist? _Jesus_. And do you know what I had to do to find cigarettes around here?” 

Steve escapes as soon as possible, eats meat and beans for breakfast with Bucky and the same hodge-podge crew from yesterday, and then on sighting a familiar cloud of smoke on the horizon, he flees to the field hospital. 

Velma is very good at her job. Steve just hates everything that her job entails, and for the first time in months he isn’t trapped by a rehearsal schedule. 

Falsworth isn’t there to vouch for him, but the medical team are short enough on personnel that Steve’s qualifications check consists of “Can you load a suture?”, and then he’s handed a pair of gloves and tossed into the makeshift operating room. Between preexisting patients and the influx from yesterday, there’s more than enough to keep him busy for the entire day, and bring him right back the following morning. 

In the back of his mind, he keeps asking _what next?_

And something in his blood is singing _fight, fight, fight, fight, fight_. 

“But don’t you have a photoshoot today?” Bucky asks, between bites of beans. 

They’re pressed together on the cot in Steve’s tent, having managed to sneak their breakfast out of the mess hall and over to the officer’s bunks where Steve has been sleeping. It’s the first time they’ve managed to be alone since the rescue. 

“Not if they can’t find me,” Steve replies. 

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Yeah, you’re a regular mystery man, Rogers. Whole camp had no idea where you were, yesterday. _Golly_ , we said, _we went and lost Captain America!_ ” 

Steve elbows him, and Bucky swears as he almost drops his beans. 

“I hate it,” Steve tells him, honestly. “The whole—press junket. The photoshoots, the scripts, the costume, everything. I know it raises good money, and it’s not a bad gig, I know that. A thousand men would trade places with me in a heartbeat. But Bucky, I… I don’t like it at all.” 

Bucky wraps an arm around his waist. Steve tries not to notice how Bucky’s hand lands on his hip, instead of wrapping all the way around. 

“They’re really just gonna put you back on tour?” he asks, squeezing a little. 

Steve shrugs. “Maybe.” 

“You know, I kinda like the costume, myself. It’s kicky. Patriotic.” 

“There are _wings_ on my _head_.” 

“You wear ‘em well, what can I say?” 

“Eat your beans, Barnes.” 

“Yes, Mrs. Bumes.” 

“That’s Mrs. _Captain_ Bumes to you, sir.” 

“I don’t think that’s right.” 

“Who are you, Emily Post? It is if I say it is.” 

It’s a strange sort of role reversal, but it gives Steve a great sense of satisfaction to watch Bucky eat. He’s entirely too skinny, starved for weeks on end at the hands of the Nazis, and he needs every last calorie he can get. 

“Here,” Steve says, when Bucky is done with his M-unit. “I’m full. Have my B-unit.” 

“Bullshit, you’re full,” Bucky says. 

“Super soldier,” Steve tells him. “I don’t need to eat as much.” 

Which is a lie. Steve can eat three meals in a row these days and still have room for dessert. Hunger is just as much of a friend now as it was in the depression. But Bucky needs the food more, and hadn’t that been _his_ argument in spring of thirty-nine, when he’d pulled that “Oh I don’t need dinner, Steve, they feed me lunch at the docks now” stunt for almost a month straight?

Steve feels nothing but satisfaction when Bucky cracks open the second B-unit and starts eating the biscuits one by one. 

By the time Bucky finishes, there still hasn’t been a bugle call yet—Steve hasn’t been here long, but he knows the ten-minute warning bugle call best, because it’s the same sound he’s heard from the fancier car horns on the streets of New York. The first time he’d heard it, he’d wondered what the hell a Pontiac Streamliner was doing in the Italian backcountry. 

“They’re giving us until tonight to ask for honorable discharge,” Bucky says, after he’s lined up their empty tins in a neat row on the ground. 

Steve turns to stare. “That’s _it?_ ” 

“The Germans are moving in on Verona, expected to attack in the next few days. If we’re not discharging, then we’re being deployed tomorrow to help.” 

“But you just got _back_ ,” Steve says, stupidly. 

Bucky gives him a half smile. “No vacations in war, Stevie.” 

And Steve is supposed to fly back to America tomorrow for an award ceremony with Senator Brandt. Two days of actual work, in which he’d more or less rescued a bunch of soldiers by _accident_ , and tomorrow he’ll be sleeping in a warm bed, eating steak for dinner, and shaking hands with half of Washington D.C. While hundreds of other soldiers ship out to the front lines to be shot at all over again. 

In the back of his mind, the question rises again— _What’s next?_

The answer is becoming clearer by the second. 

“Are you… Are you going to go home?” Steve asks. 

“Home to what?” Bucky asks. 

Steve shrugs. “Fresh fruit. Baths. Movie theaters. An actual _bed_ to sleep in.” 

“Yeah, an _empty_ bed,” Bucky replies. “Unless they’re lettin’ you go any time soon?” 

Steve shakes his head. 

“Right,” Bucky says, voice flinty. “So I’m going to Verona, and I’m gonna take out as many Nazi bastards as I can when I get there.” 

He sounds resolute, but his hands are clenched into trembling fists, and his breaths are coming slightly too fast. Steve knows him too well to be fooled. 

This isn’t Bucky, deadly furious and calm. 

This is Bucky, scared but determined. 

“I’m going with you,” Steve decides. 

Bucky’s head whips around. “What?” 

“I’m going with you. To Verona. To wherever.” 

“You can’t just—” 

“Yes I can. I can _help_. I can really help, for once in my life, and I’m going to.” 

“Steve—” 

“How many lives could I save, on the front lines? How many other Nazi factories are there, with prisoners in them, being tortured and worked to death?” 

Bucky flinches. 

“At least six, Buck. And I know exactly where they are.” The memory of that map flashes before his eyes, but he takes in a deep breath and presses on. “This serum, it was supposed to make me into a soldier that would win this war, and—all this time I spent singing and dancing and kissing babies, I never thought—I never thought about what it would mean, if I was actually over here fighting. Think about all the people I could help. All the good I could do. How can I go back to America, now, knowin’ that?” 

“But Steve, you didn’t _ask_ for this,” Bucky says, looking pained. “None of it. Just because some chump in a lab fucked up doesn’t mean you owe your _life_ to—” 

“Well, you didn’t ask to be _drafted_ , did you?” Steve asks sharply. 

“That’s different.” 

“How?” Steve demands. “Because I’m an Omega?” 

Bucky brings a hand to his face and groans. 

"You really think that just because I’m an Omega—”

“Oh, don’t start that shit with me, Steve. _Jesus_.” 

“Then what is it? How come you’re allowed to be over here, defending our country, but I have to sit at home—” 

Bucky barks out a laugh. “‘Sitting at home!’ That’s what you’ve been doing?” 

“I did what I had to, after you left, and you don’t get to judge me for it—” 

“For quitting a nice, normal job to go work for some crazy government scientist? That almost got you _killed?_ Yeah, real genius move, there—” 

“You don’t know what it’s _like_ —”

“To what?” 

“To be _left behind!_ ” Steve yells. “You said that—” But his throat is closing up, hot and tight, and the words don’t come out. 

“What?” Bucky asks.

Steve swallows back the _stupid_ tears, and instead he pulls out the envelope he’s been carrying for the past four days, the one Peggy had handed him while they were driving to Vestone. It’s crumpled and the ink has run after it went through the river, and one edge is covered in blood, but Bucky clearly recognizes it on sight anyway. 

“Dear Steve,” he recites, throwing the letter in Bucky’s lap. “If you’re reading this, it means that I’m—” He stops, and swallows hard. “It means—” 

“Hey, no—” 

“I spent _four months_ waiting for this letter,” Steve manages. 

“And you think I never found yours?” Bucky asks. 

Steve freezes.

“You think Mom never told me, about the letters you left with her?” Bucky challenges, hands balling into fists. “You think she didn’t come to me, cryin’ her heart out, when you got the flu three years ago and ended up _intubated_ , with this stack of fuckin’ _letters—_ ” Bucky breaks off and stands up, exhaling shakily. 

Bucky was _never_ supposed to find out about those. 

“You never said,” Steve says numbly. 

"I have spent my _whole life_ waiting for you to die, Steve,” Bucky says unevenly, still not looking at him. “And now that you’re finally—finally fucking _healthy_ , you want to go get blown up instead.” 

The tent is completely silent, for a long minute. 

But—Bucky’s got it all _wrong_. 

“Bucky,” Steve says slowly, rising to his feet. “Listen to me. I’ve spent my whole life trying to _help_ people. All those fistfights, all the protests—Jesus, do you know how Dr. Erskine _found_ me, Buck? I was trying to pass as a Beta with some discount scent-blocker so I could join the damn Nursing Corps.” 

Bucky turns around at that, incredulous. 

“Having this body—” Steve swallows. “Having this body, it doesn’t change who I am inside. It just means that I can finally make a real difference. I can _help_.” 

Bucky doesn’t say anything. He just stares. 

“Every single Alpha and Beta out there,” Steve says, gesturing toward the entrance of the tent. “Every single one of them is here to fight for their country. To fight for what’s _right_. Including you!”

Bucky nods, mutely.

“So don’t I deserve the same chance?” 

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” Bucky whispers. 

“I heal,” Steve says. “Better than you. Better than anyone.” 

“You can still _die_.” 

“I’m not gonna die,” Steve insists, maybe a little foolishly, but he knows in his heart it’s true. “And I’m not gonna let you die, either, because we’re gonna stick together, and we’re gonna take care of each other. And we’re gonna go kill some Nazis. Maybe you didn’t hear, but they kidnapped my husband for a month. I’ve got a bone to pick with them.” 

Bucky snorts a little. 

“Tell me you understand,” Steve pleads. 

“I—” Bucky stops, and then exhales and shakes his head.

“Bucky. _Please_.” 

“I don’t like it,” Bucky announces. 

“Well, I’m gonna do it, with or without you,” Steve replies. 

Bucky sighs. “Yeah, I know.”

Steve waits. 

"You gotta promise me you’re gonna get a real shield,” Bucky says, at last. “Not that tin piece of trash.”

“Done,” Steve says instantly. 

“And some real training.” 

“I will.” 

“And when we get back home, you’re gonna do the dishes for a year.” 

“Okay.” 

“ _Two years_.” 

“Two years.”

Bucky crosses his arms over his chest, and scowls. 

Steve steps forward and reaches out—not up, out, they’re the same height, it’s still _weird_ —and grips both of Bucky’s elbows, pulling him in gently. 

“Hey,” he says, very quietly, staring straight into Bucky’s eyes. “It’s gonna be okay. _We’re_ gonna be okay.” 

“You can see the future, huh? That one of your fancy new superpowers?”

“Yes,” Steve says seriously, and rests his forehead against Bucky’s, bringing their noses together, their lips inches apart. “Trust me. You and me. Always. End of the line.” 

Bucky sighs. 

Steve kisses him once, gentle and slow, and when he pulls back just a little Bucky is staring back at him with dark eyes. 

"Okay?" he asks quietly. 

Bucky closes his eyes, and presses his cheek against Steve's. "Okay," he says. "Okay." 


	4. 1944 - 1945

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was at this point that I came to the tragic realization that it was going to be difficult to write my treatise on gender and sexuality without... actually including a sex scene or two. Therefore, this chapter contains the best short, soft-focus sex scenes my poor little asexual heart could dredge up.

Steve has his gun in hand and ready to shoot before his brain fully registers that the sound was the zip of a sleeping bag, and not, say, a force of invading nocturnal Germans. Further rustling noises help him zero in on the tent all the way to the left—Bucky’s tent. 

Well, _his_ and Bucky’s tent, but Bucky is in there alone tonight because Steve had volunteered to take watch. Again.

Exhaling silently, Steve lowers his gun and picks up the handheld mirror that had fallen into his lap. He flattens his book against his thigh and places the mirror against it, readjusting until he finds the right angle to reflect the moonlight up onto the page. It had taken some trial and error, but Steve had eventually perfected the art of late-night reading while behind enemy lines. 

He listens to the sound of Bucky moving around inside the tent with half an ear, and then the wisp of the tent flap ties coming undone. A soft swear as the frigid night air hits. 

Then, finally, the crunch of snow. Steve looks up to see Bucky emerging from the tent. 

“Couldn’t hold it any longer?” Steve asks mildly, from the little cocoon he’s settled into, dug three feet deep into the snow to maximize warmth. He’s nestled up to the waist in his sleeping bag, wearing every layer he owns including his extra socks slid over his gloves, and seated on his pack to keep as dry as possible. 

Bucky grunts, hefting his pistol in one hand, and then stomps off to the edge of the clearing to piss. 

Steve goes back to his reading. 

Eventually, comes the crunch of snow again, but instead of heading back to the tent it’s coming straight toward Steve. Obliging, Steve carefully slots the mirror between the pages of the book to hold his place, and then slides it down into the sleeping bag with his compass, lighter, ammunition, and the other gear that every soldier has to sleep with at night when it's this cold, to prevent it from being ruined. 

Bucky slides down into the hole without question, and Steve scoots over to make room. 

“Shit,” Bucky mutters, as they shift around to get more comfortable. “Hitler couldn’t have invaded Spain? It had to be fucking _Austria?_ ” 

Steve laughs, and maneuvers the sleeping bag such that Bucky can also jam his feet inside.

“You know what’s weird?” Bucky asks. 

“Huh?” 

“Sittin’ on your left side. Twenty years, I was always on your right side.” Bucky snorts quietly. “‘less I was pissed at you.” 

Steve laughs quietly, even as his heart thumps with a beat of nostalgia. 

“‘Course,” Bucky adds, “it also means you can’t pretend not to hear me no more, when I say somethin’ you don’t like.” 

“I never _pretended_.” 

“Bull _shit_ , Rogers. What kinda clown do you think I am?” 

Steve opens his mouth to retort, but a gust of wind knocks his breath away completely, and instead he ducks his head down and slots closer to Bucky. 

“ _Fuck_ , it’s cold,” Bucky complains. 

Steve reaches up with his socked hands, squinting against the bitter wind, and pulls Bucky’s hat down so it sits just slightly more snug. 

“Ah.” Bucky coughs. “All better.” 

Steve tweaks his nose in retaliation. 

“How’s your book?” Bucky asks, nodding at the visibly rectangular lump in his sleeping bag. 

“Good.” 

“Learnin’ a lot?” 

“Yep.” 

“If only ol’ Mr. Haversham could see you now, reading in the dead of night, when you could barely finish _The Scarlet Letter_ for English 10,” Bucky teases. 

“It was _depressing_.” 

“Because _The Book of Five Rings_ is a real pick-me-up.” 

“I finished that ages ago. Now I’m on the Civil War. Memoirs of Sherman." 

"Eat your heart out, P.G. Wodehouse." 

Steve shakes his head, but feels a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. 

“You know you’re doing a good job,” Bucky says, quieter now. 

Steve looks over at him, and finds Bucky looking back. He sighs a little puff of white air, barely visible in the moonlight. “I’m running the world’s first specialized combat unit by committee, Buck.” 

“You’re listening to your team and makin’ educated decisions,'' Bucky corrects. “And you do shit like this, where you take watch every other night so the rest of us can sleep, and stay up reading books on _strategy_ and _war_ and whatever. You’re _trying_. It counts.” 

“I still don’t know what I’m doing half the time,” Steve says. 

“Hey, neither do we,” Bucky replies. “But there’s seven of us, so that means we’ve got it covered about... three hundred and fifty percent of the time.” 

Steve snorts. “Is that how it works out?” 

“Sure does,” Bucky confirms. 

Steve shifts his gaze to the line of tents twenty feet across from them, dark triangles that fade into the edges of the forest. 

“They wouldn’t be here if they didn’t believe in you,” Bucky says. “They all chose to be here, and they choose to stay.” 

They’ve had this conversation before. 

Steve takes the night watch pretty often, citing his ability to go without sleep, and at least half the time Bucky will crawl out of the tent to join him for a little while. On nicer nights, when they’re not in the bowels of enemy territory, Steve will have a little fire going and Bucky will sit next to him in peaceful silence while Steve reads his book and then tears out each finished page to feed to the fire. Depending on the book, Bucky will intercept the pages and read them first. 

But some nights, they talk. And on very rare nights, they have this conversation. 

Sometimes, Steve is a prickly bastard and brings up their near-disastrous mission at Falkert, and other times he’s moody and distrustful, because Bucky’s his Alpha, he _has_ to say these sort of things. Both present themselves as options right now—it’s bitterly cold, Steve is tired and stressed about their upcoming raid, and part of him is spoiling for a fight. 

But Bucky deserves better than that. 

So instead Steve swallows his irritation down and focuses on another truth. 

“I’m glad you’re here,” he says quietly. 

Bucky exhales a puff of white, and wraps an arm around Steve’s shoulders. “Me too, sweetheart.” 

A smile pokes at the corner of Steve’s mouth. 

“You know what this reminds me of?” Bucky asks, tipping his head so his voice can go lower, softer still. “You’n’me, on the Martyr’s Monument, back in high school.” 

The memory crashes over him from a million years ago. The flashing lights of King’s Theater, the cold granite under his thin trousers, and the moment of _of course I wanna marry you._ Him and Bucky, side by side in the dark of night, cold wind whipping at their faces, suspended alone between yesterday and tomorrow. 

“Just need some gin, is all,” Bucky adds, thoughtful. 

“I can’t get drunk anymore,” Steve says mournfully. 

“I didn’t say _you_ were getting any.” 

“Rude.” 

“Hey, Steve?” 

“Yeah?” 

“You think your stupid graffiti’s still there?” 

“What, from a decade ago?” 

“They closed down tours like three months after we snuck up there. I bet it might be. We should check it out, when we get home.” 

“Bet you a bottle of gin it’s not,” Steve says. 

Bucky huffs out a small laugh. “Sure thing, Rogers.” 

  
  
Steve and Bucky have sex for the first time since the serum in the bathroom of a train. They’re travelling back to England for their first official leave, after almost two months of non-stop missions, and Bucky has been handsy for _days_ before he finally snaps at three in the morning, and drags Steve off to the tiny cubicle at the end of the train car. It’s pitch black inside and in order to fit Steve has to balance one leg on the rim of the toilet, but they don’t need light or space to rut against each other like teenagers. 

“Yeah, baby, yeah, just— _yeah_ —”

“Shhh— _uh!"_ Steve’s shush is cut off by an involuntary gasp as Bucky bites down on a sensitive patch of skin just under his jaw. His hands are everywhere at once. 

“Wanna be in you,” Bucky murmurs into his ear. 

“ _Yeah_.” 

“Wanna be inside you again, wanna fill you up—”

Steve whimpers helplessly. 

“—you’re so fucking—” 

But then Bucky’s hands slide up Steve’s shirt, beginning to tug it upward as his fingers skim up Steve’s sides, and suddenly—

“ _No_ ,” Steve gasps, his skin too tight and his bones too big and nausea rising fast in the back of his throat. Everything in him is fighting. _No, no, no_.

Bucky goes perfectly still against him. 

Steve takes a deep breath, and deliberately relaxes his grip on Bucky’s wrists. He hadn’t even realized he’d grabbed them.

“Not there,” he says.

Bucky’s hands slide back down to Steve’s hips, and his shirt falls back down. “Here?” 

“Yeah. Okay.” 

Their noses brush together, but Bucky doesn’t close the gap between them. He waits, threads his fingers through the belt loops of Steve’s pants, possessive but not pushing, and lets Steve be the one to press their mouths together again. 

This time, Steve’s shirt stays on. 

Afterward, when they’re slumped against each other, trying to catch their breaths, and the only sounds are the humming of the train and the whistle of a draft coming through the side panel where the wood is rotting, Bucky says, “Hey, wait.” 

“Hm?” 

“Did I just take your virginity again?”

“ _Bucky_.” 

“That’s not a no.” 

“No.” 

“No it’s not a no?” 

“I am going to sit on your head, Barnes.” 

“That is not gonna help you keep your re-virginity _at all_.” 

“I’m not a _re_ - _virgin!_ ” 

“Technically, the way your stupid blocker is wearing off right now, you’re the walking definition of a reversion.” 

Steve exhales, long and slow, and Bucky cackles at his own pun. 

  
  


Bucky corners him again, the next morning, rubs them off in a bathroom at the train station, and then later that afternoon, and they jerk each other off in a closet in the airplane hangar. 

“You had your RutNix, right?” Steve asks, in the dark of the closet, wiping up their mess with an old rag that’s probably filthier than whatever is between their legs. 

“Yeah,” Bucky confirms, and reaches down to where Steve is giving his balls a cursory cleaning. Takes the rag, and skims a finger over the soft skin there. “No ruts here, baby. Just me, wantin’ my boy.” 

Steve shudders, oversensitized, another erection already growing. 

“Mmm,” Bucky says appreciatively, cupping Steve’s balls in his hand, thumb coming up to brush over the underside of his cock. “And I’m not the only one, am I?” 

The next night, they’ve had almost a whole day in England and Steve is feeling the best he has in months. He doesn’t have to set up a tent to sleep in tonight, he actually had enough food to eat, there’s no night watch schedule to sort out, and he’d met with Howard Stark and finally gotten a redose of his hormone suppressant—a week late, but better than never. 

Inspired and horny, Steve pulls Bucky out back to the shadows behind the dance hall, and Bucky gets on his knees and blows Steve next to crates of empty milk bottles. But when Steve tries to return the favor, Bucky shakes his head and brushes Steve’s hand away. 

“I’m okay,” he says. 

“Let me—” 

“No, you don’t have to.” 

“I _want_ to.” 

“Steve, _no_.” 

Steve stares at him in confusion when he realizes that Bucky is _serious_. He doesn’t want sex. 

This has… never happened before. 

“I just—I don’t… want that, right now,” Bucky says stiffly. 

“Are you okay?” 

“I’m fine,” Bucky insists. 

Steve does not believe him. At all. 

“You know, with, uh… the war,” Bucky says, not looking him in the eye. “Sometimes things are. They’re different. I don’t… Oh, Jesus, wipe that look of your face, Rogers. Whatever you’re thinking, you’re wrong.”

“What _happened?”_ Steve demands. 

“Nothing!” 

“What do you mean, _nothing_ , you just said—”

“No! Listen, forget I said it.” 

“Was it HYDRA?” 

Steve is going to go back and kill every single one of those Nazis at Krausberg again. Slower. With his _bare hands_. 

“HYDRA did not—I was experimented on, Steve, I wasn’t _raped_ , okay? Jesus Christ.” 

“But—” 

“Okay!” Bucky yells, throwing his hands up. “Okay, okay, I take it back. I chose the wrong lie. God, I should have known better.” 

“You—” Steve stares at him again, righteous anger abruptly gone and feeling wrong-footed for it. “What?” 

Bucky stares back at him, and then takes in a deep breath, closing his eyes. “The truth is—” But he doesn’t finish. He exhales, long and slow, and then takes in another breath. Visibly bracing himself, he says, “The truth is that… when you smell like this, with your blocker all fresh, I—” 

Steve feels like he’s been punched in the stomach. He takes an involuntary step backward. 

Bucky opens his eyes, and his expression is pained. “Don’t look at me like that.” 

“Like what?” Steve asks numbly. 

“Listen, Steve, you gotta know that I love you. I will _always_ love you. And I told you before, I don’t care if you’re big or small, skinny or fat, dickless, whatever—I think you’re gorgeous. But—those blockers, they make you smell like—shit, it’s like you’re some kind of Alpha _god_. It’s like six Alphas in one body.”

Steve forces himself to take a breath, and it feels like there are iron bands around his chest. His heart is beating in his throat. “Okay,” he says, struggling to keep his voice even. 

“It’s _not_ okay,” Bucky says, almost angrily. “I love you, and I _want_ you, but there’s—there’s something down there that just doesn’t—it—when you smell like another Alpha it just refuses to work.” 

“But,” Steve says weakly, “some people—some Alphas—you know sometimes, they… do things together. They like it.” 

“Yeah, well, maybe some people come wired like that. But I’ve been trying, and it’s not—” Bucky makes a gesture at his pants. “—it doesn’t _happen_.” 

“Okay,” Steve says. 

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says, miserably. 

“It’s not your fault,” Steve says automatically. 

He reminds himself, for the millionth time, of all the good things that the serum has done for him. He’s healthy—he can breathe properly, and he has no chronic pain, and not only can he stand up for himself, but he can stand up for _others_ , too. He was able to raise immeasurable funds for the war effort, and now as a soldier on the front, he’s been able to save countless lives. He gets to be here, fighting with Bucky, _protecting_ Bucky, instead of sitting at home and waiting for letters in the mail. It may not be a gift he’d asked for, but it was a gift, nonetheless, and he should be grateful for all that it’s done for him. 

So his Alpha can’t stand the scent of him anymore. Isn’t _attracted_ to him anymore.

This is... just another sacrifice to make. 

  
  


Steve startles awake to complete darkness, and the half-sit he attempts is completely fouled by his own sleeping bag, and ends up being more of a flop. Before he can start to struggle with the zip, though, something shifts against him. 

Blinking into the shadows of the tent, Steve can just barely make out the lump that is Bucky. 

What woke him is obvious, when a second later Bucky thrashes in his own sleeping bag and exhales hard, almost a word, a _protest_ , but not fully formed. 

Steve finally finds the zip and yanks it down—he hears something rip, but it’s not important—and rolls onto his side. 

Bucky makes an unhappy whimpering sound, and curls into himself. 

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve breathes, mostly air and the click of his tongue against the back of his throat. He frees an arm and reaches out, shakes him hard. “ _Bucky_.” 

And Bucky jolts, jerks, eyes flying open and his own arm whipping out in defense, but Steve grabs it with lightning fast reflexes, grabs both of his arms and holds _tight_.

“It’s Steve, it’s okay,” he whispers, almost soundless. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” 

Bucky is wide-eyed, breathing hard. 

Steve wants to say more, wants to _hold him_ , but Morita is on watch tonight, only feet away. 

“Steve,” Bucky whispers. 

Steve nods, and presses a finger to Bucky’s lips. 

Bucky stares at him in the darkness, and eventually nods back. He reaches up and grabs Steve’s hand, clasps it tight, and then pulls Steve’s hand over his heart where it’s beating rabbit-fast. His chest rises and falls rapid, jagged. 

Steve squeezes his hand hard. 

And then later, when Bucky’s breathing has evened out and his death grip on Steve has relaxed, Steve slips his hand free and draws three familiar symbols over Bucky’s chest. 

Bucky exhales, and flattens Steve’s hand over his sternum. Starts tracing his own letters on the back of Steve’s hand. 

He gets as far as _S-O-R_ , and Steve moves his hand in the middle of the second R to flick him hard. 

_B-R-A-T_ , Bucky writes instead. 

_B-A-B-Y_. 

And then later still, when Bucky is peacefully snoring again, Steve lies awake and wonders if he hadn’t been so fucking stubborn, if he hadn’t planted himself on the front lines of this war and practically _dared_ the Axis armies to come and kill him—if Steve had gone back to America, safe and sound—would Bucky have taken that honorable discharge? 

The facts are facts. Bucky had gone to war, so Steve had gone to war too, even if it had taken several felonies, an experiment gone disastrously wrong, a government conspiracy, and _Howard Stark_ to get him there. 

He and Bucky are gears interlocking, the wheels of a tank, propelling each other inexorably forward. 

So when Steve had said _I’m gonna do it, with or without you_ , had Bucky even had a choice but to follow?

  
  


It’s a blur in the corner of his eye, and a split second decision is needed. 

Two Nazis have just escaped into the woods. They may or may not have the schematics on them. About half the enemy are dead at this point, and Dum Dum, Falsworth, Dernier and Jim are currently closing in on the cargo wagon—the most likely location of the schematics, but a decoy isn’t out of the question. Gabby is still fighting her way up the back of the troops, distracting at least half the remaining soldiers. Bucky is up a tree, picking Nazis off one by one. 

“Morita! Go!” Steve yells, and when Morita looks over, Steve points at the vanishing backs of the two soldiers. 

Jim rabbits after them without question, and Steve shoots the Nazi who tries to stop him right between the eyes. 

Dernier is faster, Gabby is a better shot, but Steve’s never met anyone who can navigate terrain the way Jim can. The glance they’d taken at the map this morning had probably been enough for Jim to memorize the entire landscape. 

Without Jim, though, there’s only Dernier, Dum Dum and Falsworth trying to get to the cargo wagon. Steve fights his way closer, and he sees the brutal look on Gabby’s face as she takes out Nazi after Nazi with brutal efficiency. 

Steve flings his shield horizontally, right into a soldier’s face, and doesn’t even pause to watch her crumple to the ground before he’s swinging left with his gun up—

But the soldier is already falling to the ground, untouched by Steve. 

Steve smiles a little, unable to give Bucky any more thanks than that, and then focuses in time to see another soldier charging at him with a knife and an unholy scream. 

In the end, Steve and the Commandos stand amidst two dozen dead bodies—and to show for it, Steve has a stab wound to the leg, Gabby a broken nose, and Jim is clutching the schematics with a hand that only has two working fingers. 

  
  


Sometimes, Steve thinks about the way Bucky looks when he’s perched up in one of his spots—the flat line of his mouth, the absolute steadiness of his breathing, the coldness of his gaze. Bucky, who loves stupid science fiction pulps and baseball, who knew how to fix a clogged sink and how to pack crates at the docks. Who had never held a gun in his life, before the war. 

He’s an amazing shot. 

Where had it come from? Had it always been there, or had the war put it in him? 

The first time Bucky had really seen Steve fight had been on their first mission with the Commandos. A base that was supposed to have been abandoned, just scouting for information. It hadn’t been as abandoned as advertised, and Steve had killed three guards in rapid succession, then turned to see Bucky… _staring_ at him. 

Steve will never forget that look, as long as he lives. 

He and Bucky have known each other through countless phases and chapters of life, but this is the first time they’ve known each other as killers. 

Steve wonders if Jim was always freakishly good with maps before the war, if maybe he used it for something normal like forestry or taxi driving, and the war has just taken that skill and twisted it into the ability to track two soldiers through dense brush, trap them in a ravine and kill them both with ease. He wonders if Dum Dum was a mechanic before the war, or an engineer, and it was the war that had perverted that into the ability to rig a tank to explode in less than five minutes, and take out anyone within twenty feet of it. 

Were they all born killers, or did the war make them this way?

  
  


They’re only in Mignano for the night before they’re heading up into the Aurunci Mountains, and Steve had warned all of them that they’d be leaving before the sun was up. Nevertheless, every single one of his team chose to spend the night getting smashed. Bucky included. 

“Hey. Hey, what’d’you think those are?” Bucky asks. 

Steve squints at the tidy rows of trees, but in the darkness it’s hard to tell. “Apple trees?” 

Bucky stumbles off the road and into the orchard for a closer look. 

“Bucky! That’s private property!” 

Bucky scoffs. “It’s just gonna get bombed next week, anyway. This place is a fuckin’ ruin.” 

“That doesn’t mean we can just—Bucky!” 

Bucky is paying him absolutely no heed, and yanks a tree branch down for closer inspection. He’s quiet for a moment, studying it, and then announces, “S’real small apples here.” 

Steve squints at the branch. “I think those are olives.” 

Bucky lets go of the branch and wanders off to the next tree. “You think all the apples in Italy are this small?” 

“They’re olives, Buck.” 

“Bet Italian apple pies are—oof!” Bucky trips over a root, and Steve only just catches him. “Thanks, Stevie. But—but I bet Italian apple pies are... really, really _terrible_. Because their apples are too small. America should bring them real apples.” 

" _Olives_ , you idiot.” 

“I love you, too, idiot,” Bucky replies, patting Steve’s arm. 

Steve rolls his eyes, and gives up. He grabs Bucky’s hand and pulls him back toward the road. “Come on. We have to get back to the base, we have a mission in five hours.” 

“Nooooo,” Bucky groans. 

“Yes. Come on.” 

“You’re so bossy,” Bucky complains. 

“You knew that when you mated me seven years ago, pal, and Catholics don’t get divorces, so you’re SOL.”

Bucky grabs his arm. “I don’t wanna divorce.” 

“Well, thank God for that.” 

“I like you a lot, Steve.” 

“I know.” 

“I like you more’n—more than _anyone else_.” 

“Uh-huh.” 

“You don’t believe me. You used to believe me, before. When we were in America.” 

Steve sighs. “Bucky, I promise that after all this time, I’ve picked up on the fact that you like me a lot. Let’s start walking back toward the base, okay?” 

“‘Kay,” Bucky says, and takes a single step before turning back to Steve and jabbing a finger at him. “See! I listen. Because I like you.” 

“Keep moving,” Steve says, nudging him back toward the road. 

Bucky huffs, but begins trudging forward, listing a little to the right as he goes. Steve wraps an arm around him and steers him straight. 

“You’re so strong, now,” Bucky says, as he’s agreeably dragged toward the road. “I mean, you were always… you were always strong, but not with muscles. With other things. But now your muscles are strong, too, so you make sense now.” 

“Uh-huh,” Steve says. 

Bucky continues on, apparently not requiring any further prompting. “An’ you know what else? Now that you’re really tall—you know, at first it was kinda weird, because you used to be so _short_. I know you don’t like it. You don’t say it, but I _know_ , because I _know you_.” 

"Left,” Steve directs gently, as they come to the road. “Base is only quarter of a mile from here, I think.” 

“But there are good things about bein’ tall,” Bucky says, completely guileless. “Like how—how now I can see your eyes all the time. I like that. And I won’t lose you in the subway anymore! And—and—” Bucky stumbles a little. “Oops. Sorry. Anyway, the other thing is that… is that I think my back isn’t gonna be so sore when we’re old and I don’t hafta bend over to kiss you all the time. So that’s good, too.” 

“Sure is,” Steve agrees, voice quiet because his heart is sitting in his throat right now. 

"Do you believe me?” 

“Yeah, Buck. I believe you.” 

“You promise?” 

“Promise.” 

“Good.” 

They walk in silence down the road for a few minutes, the only sounds their footsteps and the countryside chorus of cicadas and frogs that Steve, as a city boy, hadn’t even known existed until he came to Europe. 

“You know what else I like?” Bucky asks. 

“Hm?” 

“Your dick.” 

Steve heaves out a sigh. 

“Do you like my dick, too?” 

“Bucky.” 

“ _Steeeeeeve_.” 

“You know I do.” 

Bucky sighs, sadly. “I miss having sex. Hitler is the _worst_.” 

Steve struggles not to laugh. “He sure is, Buck.” 

“Hey, did you hear. Did you hear, Hitler went to a fortuneteller, an’ he asked her when he was gonna die. An’ she told him he was gonna die on a Jewish holiday. So Hitler asks her, which one, right? Which holiday? An’ she says, ‘Fuhrer, _any_ day you die on, will be a Jewish holiday.” 

“That’s a good one.” 

“We should be Jewish,” Bucky decides. “I want a holiday when Hitler dies, too.” 

“We don’t have to be Jewish to do that,” Steve points out. 

“I know that, genius. I was _joking_. You can’t just go and be Jewish, you know.” 

Steve rolls his eyes. “You’re hilarious. We’re turning right, here, we gotta go up this hill.”

Hill is a generous term for what is a ski-slope of a road leading up to the army base. At the top, Steve can just make out a few flickering lanterns. 

“Steve, I can’t walk all the way up there,” Bucky tells him, matter of fact. “I’ll die.” 

“I’ll protect you,” Steve says dryly. “Let’s go. We have to be awake in less than five hours.” 

“You’re so _bossy_.” 

“You said that already.” 

“You’re lucky I like you.” 

“I know.” 

“I like you a _lot_.” 

“I know, Bucky. I like you a lot, too.” 

And he does. He really, really does. 

  
  


The first time they’d been pulled back to Southampton for leave, no one had so much as batted an eye at another passel of American soldiers arriving at the military base. This is their second official leave, and this time around, word seems to have spread about Captain America. 

Steve is wearing his captain’s uniform, but even in regulation Army greens and not a spangle in sight, but he’s being… _recognized_. 

He’d asked the front guard for directions, and halfway through the poor man—boy, really, couldn’t have been even twenty—had trailed off, eyes fixing on Steve’s name badge. 

“Second floor, and?” Steve prompts. 

The boy is slack-jawed for another beat, before he visibly comes back to life. “Uh. Oh! Right. Uh. Yeah, second floor, take the hallway toward the Lincoln portrait. It’s the fourth door on the left. I mean fifth! I mean—” The boy stares at him in panic. “I don’t remember. I’m so sorry. Fourth or fifth. Um. I can show you?” 

“...I’ll be alright on my own,” Steve says, doing his level best not to appear as awkward as he feels in kind. 

“Um. Right. Okay. Uh, Captain. Captain America, sir.” 

“Thanks,” Steve says, and leaves immediately. 

Behind him, he hears the boy start to hyperventilate. 

On his trek, he passes a few groups of fellow soldiers, and most don’t look twice, but one group walks past him and then, when Steve is almost twenty paces away, stops with a hissed, “ _Wait, was that—?”_ And Steve could listen in if he wanted to, but he chooses to tune them out. 

At least when he’d been on tour, once the tights had come off he’d been just another Alpha on the street. 

On the second floor, it’s in the sixth office on the left that Steve finds Peggy Carter in—though office may be a generous term for the windowless cupboard Peggy has somehow crammed a table and chair into. He’s pretty sure that his bathroom back in Brooklyn had been larger. 

“Captain Rogers!” Peggy says, looking surprised but pleased. “I heard you were here on leave.” 

“Just for a few days. May I come in?” 

Peggy snorts indelicately. “If you can fit.” 

Steve slides around a stack of boxes and manages to slot himself in between a rack of shelves and the front of her desk. It’s tight, but being kept on three C-rats a day for months on end has left him pretty slim, for all his muscle. He’s had to take in his uniform twice since he left the USO tour. 

Even so, when he shifts his stance to get away from a cabinet corner poking him in his left hip, he then finds a dictaphone jabbing him in his right thigh instead. He decides the cabinet corner is the lesser of the two evils, and shifts left again.

"Do all MI-5 agents have offices this nice?" Steve asks her. 

"Only when you're on loan to America," Peggy answers, a touch grimly. She nods at the file in Steve’s hand. “I assume that’s for me?” 

“Sort of,” Steve says. 

Peggy raises an eyebrow. 

“It’s not… illegal,” Steve adds. 

“Shut the door, Captain,” Peggy sighs. 

“I thought we agreed that you’d call me Steve.” 

“Shut the door, _Steve_.” 

Steve shuts the door, and sets the file on her desk but keeps two fingers pinched on the edge of it. Peggy looks at him expectantly, and after a long moment, Steve eventually manages to let go completely. 

After another hesitation, Steve says, “There’s a scientist who works with the Germans. I thought he was dead, but then in Fehmarn, I found evidence that he’s still alive. His name is—Zola.” Steve watches her slide the folder closer. “After I realized he was still alive, I started grabbing anything that looked relevant.” 

“Zola,” Peggy says slowly. 

“He was at the factory in Krausberg,” Steve says. 

A squat man in a suit, clutching a briefcase, standing in the background behind the man whose face had come off—Steve had barely noticed his existence the first time, distracted by the man whose _face had come off_ , but on replaying the memory for the thousandth time he’d eventually realized that there had been another person there. The same man he’d seen running down the hallway where he’d first found Bucky. 

Steve doesn’t say that part, though. 

He also doesn’t tell her that the name hadn’t come from careful study, or stolen documentation, but from the midnight hours of his tent, a name that had slipped out during another nightmare, between the cries for help and the pleas to stop. 

“You brought this to your superiors?” Peggy asks. 

“They’re not interested,” Steve replies. “They think there are more… tactically important people to follow.” 

“Then they’re probably right,” Peggy says, lifting an eyebrow. “There’s more at play in this war than you can see, being on the ground—”

Steve shakes his head. “They think just because he doesn’t design machines, he’s not dangerous. But you and I both know that not all the weapons a scientist can make are made of metal and gunpowder.” 

Peggy goes very still at that. 

Steve gestures at the file, and Peggy opens it. The top item is a small, thin notebook, slightly singed but still intact. The handwriting inside is spidery and splotchy, written too quickly for the ink to dry properly between the swoop of each letter—but even if you can discern the letters, the whole thing is in code. There are two key parts that Steve doesn’t need a codebreaker for, though. 

He reaches down and flips two more pages, to an anatomy diagram that’s been cut and pasted straight out of Steve’s nursing textbooks. And then, almost a dozen pages later, in the middle of what is clearly a ‘results’ section based on all the sketches of tables and charts, a number that recurs over and over again on the page. 

_32557038_

“That’s Bucky’s serial number,” Steve says quietly. 

Peggy flips through a few more pages, and then closes the notebook and slides it to the left and looks at the stack of papers underneath, brittle with water damage but still with legible type. She flips through a few more pages, and then eventually looks up at Steve. 

“You know that the Germans got a hold of an early version of Erskine’s serum, four years ago,” she says quietly, eyes going unfocused. “They’d tested it on one man, and it went… very wrong. The one you met at the HYDRA facility in Krausberg. But it was never certain whether they’d _kept_ experimenting, after I got Dr. Erskine back. We did everything we could to keep up the appearance that we ourselves had given it up as a lost cause, and hoped that Dr. Esrkine was singular enough in his genius that no one else would be able to progress forward as we did.” 

Steve swallows. Peggy is alluding to the same terrible idea that has been percolating in the back of his mind for the last few months. He sometimes wonders, on those lonely nights when he’s taken watch and there’s no moon to read by, what would happen if he were ever captured. What would happen to him, at the hands of someone like Zola. 

“Before I left for the tour,” he says hesitantly, “they took samples from me. Blood, hair.” Bone and semen, amongst other things. 

But Peggy shakes her head. “They weren’t able to do anything with it. But there’s also very little money being funneled into the research, after we were shut down last year.”

Steve is used to the power that he wields in battle, now. He knows that he can outpace any Nazi, break a man’s leg with his bare hands, can throw a knife from the treeline and have it slice the carotid of a man in a moving vehicle. He is one of the deadliest weapons the Allied forces have.

On nights when he’s sitting alone in the cold, whiling away the hours in complete silence, Steve sometimes also thinks about what would happen if the Nazis—if _HYDRA_ —ever managed to create their own version of the serum. If they managed to create the platoon of super soldiers that Senator Brandt had dreamed of. 

The war would turn on a dime. 

“I’ll see what I can do,” Peggy tells him, closing the file and pressing both hands flat over it, like she can suppress everything it represents as well. “If I discover anything critical then I’ll find a way to send you a message.” 

“Thank you,” Steve says gratefully. “I know you’re busy, but—I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was important.” 

“Anything for a friend,” Peggy replies, and Steve smiles at that. 

  
  


"Chief!" Jim yells, waving Steve over to his end of the bar. "Chief, chief, chief." 

Steve makes his way over through the crush of bodies that are packed into the Whip & Fiddle for a Saturday night in Southampton—in a city that's been bombed fifty-two times and counting, the residents don't need much of an excuse to go out and celebrate. Across the pub, Bucky and Gabby are engaged in a game of darts, and Steve briefly catches Bucky’s eye before he turns toward the bar.

Jim gestures at Dernier with the hand that isn't holding his pint. "Ask him!" 

"He doesn't believe us," Dum Dum adds.

"Zey say zee Omegas in America," Dernier starts, and pauses to shake his head. "Zey say—zere is no 'air!" 

Steve frowns. "Of course they have hair." 

"Non," Dernier says, leaning in closer, and gesturing downward. " _'Air._ "

"Oh," Steve says. He can feel his face going red. "Uh. Well. Yeah, some Omegas shave their legs and stuff. Most, I guess, nowadays." 

Dernier makes a noise of disgust. " _Why?"_

"Uh," Steve says. 

"My friend, it's a thing of beauty," Dum Dum says, clapping one hand on Dernier's shoulder and gesturing expensively with the other. "Imagine, silky smooth skin, from top to bottom. No scratching, no itching—"

"Like a baby," Dernier says, lip curling in clear distaste. 

"No, not like a _baby_ , you cracked egg. Imagine getting between Veronica Lake's legs and there's a big ol' bush down there like she's some kind of Alpha—" 

" _Okay,_ " Steve says loudly. 

Jim raises his eyebrows pointedly at Dernier and takes a swig of his drink. 

Steve sighs deeply. "I know we just got back, but can you guys at least _pretend_ like you remember how to act in civilization?” 

“Civilization?” Jim asks. 

“Not sure you would call Britain civilization,” Dum Dum agrees. “Have you tasted the horse piss they call beer in this place?” 

“Oi!" Falsworth calls, swinging down from absolutely nowhere and wrapping both arms around Dum Dum's neck. "I heard that, fuckos. If you don't like your wallop, then don't bloody drink it.” 

"The fuck is a wallop?" 

"Give me that."

"Don't fuckin' take my beer!" 

"You've just said you don't like it!" 

"I still fuckin' paid for it. Stop it—stop it!" 

As Falsworth dives for Dum Dum, a warm presence brushes up next to Steve, knocking their shoulders together and then staying pressed there, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, familiar and solid and not at all in a fraternal way.

He's been doing this, for the last couple days. Steve has counted out the weeks, and he'd known it was coming when he'd realized they'd be getting back to England four days late.

"Can't take them anywhere," Bucky says, shaking his head. 

Steve takes a careful small step away from him, then reaches over and wordlessly pulls a red dart out of the back of Bucky’s collar. 

From across the room, Gabby salutes them both. 

"Terrible aim!" Bucky yells, and lobs it over the heads of the patrons. It sails in a perfect arc and right into Gabby's waiting hand. 

“Mais, taisez-vous, j'ai une question!" Dernier insists, pulling Falsworth down to share his own barstool, wrapping an arm around his shoulders to keep him in place. "Falsworth. Très important."

"Can't believe you wankers are over here making fun of the English when we've got Napoleon Bonaparte hanging around, can't speak goddamn English," Falsworth grumbles. 

Steve feels a slight tug at his back pocket, a finger slotting into place down low, too low for most people to pay attention to. 

He reaches down and pushes Bucky’s hand away as subtly as he can. 

"Zee Omegas," Dernier continues, undeterred. "Falsworth. Zee Omegas Englishes, do zey 'ave zee 'air?"

"Do they have what now?" 

"'Air!" Dernier repeats, with the same gesture he'd made for Steve. "Zee 'air. In America, zee Omegas, zey no 'ave it. Like babies." 

"He wants to know if English Omegas... _shave?_ " Falsworth asks. He's the worst of them at picking through the French accent, possibly on principle. 

"That's right," Dum Dum agrees. "Jackie here likes 'em nice an' hairy." 

"You’re a bloody Beta, what Omega is going to sleep with you anyway?" Falsworth demands.

Dernier grins. "Many Omegas." He mimes counting on his fingers—one, two, three, four—until he runs out fingers, and then he glances down at his boots like he's about to start counting his toes. 

There’s a round of groans. 

“He’s lying,” Jim pronounces. 

“ _Many_ ,” Dernier repeats, smug. 

"French Omegas must have fuckin' low standards, then, if they're sleeping with your sorry arse." 

“Hey, hey, hey, but with all that hair down there, is he sure they were really Omegas at all?” 

“Let’s get out of here,” Bucky murmurs in Steve’s ear, too close, lingering a fraction too long. 

A shiver of _want_ sparks down Steve’s spine. 

Bucky tugs on his sleeve, shamelessly pulling him toward the door. 

Steve glances at Dernier, who is now gesturing for Gabby to come over, no doubt to translate an insult that outstrips his skill with English. Falsworth is leaning over the counter, waving down the barman, and Dum Dum and Jim are engaged in a heated discussion about whether to count by number of _Omegas_ , or number of _acts_. None of them are paying attention to Steve, or Bucky, or the way their hands are joined together.

None of them notice Steve slipping toward the door, hot on Bucky’s heels.

There’s a light summer rain outside, making the gas street lamps look even hazier than usual. They phased gas lamps out of New York City years ago, in favor of electric lights, but Steve has found that many things in Europe seem to be several years behind America. 

Steve isn’t exactly sure where Bucky plans to take them—at this point, he’s just hoping it won’t be a back alleyway—but he surprises Steve by leading him to the very next door over. 

“Pub has an inn,” Bucky mutters, and produces a key. 

Of course it does. 

The door opens straight into a narrow stairwell, which leads up to a dark, narrow hallway that, from the sound of it, sits right above the bar. There are four doors, and Bucky selects the last on the left. Steve follows him in. 

The door swings shut, and even though Steve knew where this was going, he still wasn’t quite expecting Bucky to slam him up against the door first thing and go straight for his neck. 

“What—” 

Bucky _bites_. 

“—okay,” Steve gasps. 

“You smell,” Bucky growls, “so _good_.” 

“Nn," Steve replies, rational thought slipping away because now there’s a knee pressing between his thighs, and stubble scraping against his throat. "Bucky—" 

Bucky’s mouth travels up Steve’s neck, nipping at the fragile skin just under the angle of his jaw, each graze of teeth like an electric shock that hits his entire body and leaves him weak, _wanting._ It's all he can do to grip the back of Bucky’s jacket and pull him closer, inhaling the musk of arousal and Alpha and home.

 _Oh_ , Steve thinks, because the world makes sense again, and _yes, yes, yes—_

Bucky hums in satisfaction and _sucks_. 

Steve’s head hits the back of the door with a thud, and he grinds down helplessly against Bucky’s knee. His hole clenches down on nothing. Bucky is everywhere at once, the strong hands pinning his shoulders into place, and the leg between his thighs, and the hard line of his cock throbbing against Steve's— 

A warm rush of slick comes, and Steve spreads his legs wider, rutting, desperate. 

"Please—" 

" _Mine,"_ Bucky growls.

"Ah— _ah—_ " 

“—yeah, baby—” 

The keening noise that escapes Steve’s mouth is nearly inhuman, and he comes with one hand fisted in Bucky’s hair, the other gripping the door frame for support. Distantly, he hears the sound of wood cracking. 

Bucky makes an animalistic noise of approval and wraps a hand around Steve’s neck, pressing him up against the door hard and thrusting once, twice, three times, before he comes with a groan of his own. 

The only sound in the room is their gasping breaths. 

They never even turned the lights on. 

Bucky is all but collapsed against Steve, head resting on his shoulder, one arm draped around his shoulder and his fingers loosely gripping Steve’s neck still. Steve presses a kiss to the side of his head, and Bucky squeezes the back of his neck in reply. Steve pulls him closer. 

Steve loves him, more than anything. He doesn’t think he could stop if he tried. 

Eventually, Bucky laughs quietly into the darkness. 

“Mm?” 

“I fuckin’ needed that.” 

“I know,” Steve murmurs. 

They stay like that for another long moment, and then eventually Bucky inhales and reaches over to flip the light switch. 

A single bulb on a string comes to life with a flicker overhead, and the room is cast in a soft yellow glow. There’s a single bed covered with a homemade quilt, and next to it a rickety desk and chair. To the other side, a single window with the curtains drawn closed, and below it a porcelain sink with two separate taps. 

“Cozy,” Steve comments. 

“Better than the barracks, at least,” Bucky replies, and tugs Steve toward the bed. “And a hell of a lot better than that fuckin’ tent.” 

Steve watches him sit down on the bed, and bend over to start untying his boots. He starts to sit on the desk, which immediately groans in protest, so instead he switches to the chair. His slick is rapidly cooling between his legs, which isn't a particularly pleasant feeling but it's nice to know that he hasn't lost the ability to make it completely.

With the suppressants, he's bone dry unless he's several days past the window for redosing, and even then he only makes a fraction of what he had before. One time he'd probed a finger inside out of curiosity, and the glands that had once been full and round are now atrophied to the point where they're barely palpable. It does not make bowel movements particularly pleasant. 

Downstairs, there’s a muffled crash, followed by what sounds like the entire pub cheering.

Steve has a bad feeling that his men are responsible for it. But right now, they’re not on duty, so whatever they’re up to, it’s not his problem. 

“Take off your damn shoes, Rogers, get comfy,” Bucky says, pulling his left boot off. “I paid for a whole night here.” 

Steve frowns. “We can’t spend the night here.” 

“Yeah, we can. When was the last time we were actually alone?” Bucky asks. “ _Weeks?_ ” 

“We—” 

“And the five minutes we got in that factory in Nice don’t count, we were taking cover from a machine gun.” 

“But—” 

“I _miss you_.” 

Steve stares back at him miserably. “I miss you too.” 

“So let’s take one goddamn night to ourselves, then,” Bucky replies. “We deserve it, Steve. No Captain America, no pretending to be an Alpha, no pretendin' to just be friends, none of it. I wanna make you laugh and then kiss you for it, like I used to.” 

It’s a different kind of loneliness, to be with Bucky every day, but at the same time never actually _with_ him. 

Steve wonders, just a moment, if Bucky would be saying all this if he wasn’t two weeks past his blocker redose, and the Alpha smell wasn’t so dilute. He knows for a _fact_ that it’s the only reason they had sex tonight. 

But Bucky loves him. He loved him small, and he loves him big, and love and attraction are two different things, and it’s not Bucky’s fault that he wasn’t born some kinda queer who could get off with another Alpha.

Bucky _loves_ him. 

But.

“It’s not a good idea, staying out all night,” Steve says. 

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I ain’t had a good idea since 1937, Rogers, and we’re both still alive anyway. Come on.” 

“Bucky, this is _serious—_ ” 

“Everything is serious, these days! Everyone’s at war, starving, dying, the whole fucking continent is a graveyard. We deserve a night off. _Together_.” 

“Where are we gonna tell them we were all night?” Steve asks weakly. 

"Who, the Howlies? Steve, they're completely sauced, they're not gonna be checking our rack tonight." 

“But what if they do?” 

“Then nothing.” 

“Bucky… Two Alphas. Gone all night. They might think—” 

_"No one_ is gonna think we’re a couple’a queers, Steve, for fuck’s sake. They know we’re not like that.” 

Steve swallows, and says, “Aren’t we, though?” 

“What?” Bucky asks. 

“Queer.” 

“What the fuck? No. We aren’t. You aren’t _actually_ an Alpha, Steve, you’re an Omega. We’re normal. We’re married, we had a house, you have _in-laws_ , remember?” 

“Well, what if I’d been born like this?” Steve challenges. “Not just big and strong and stuff, but—a real Alpha. And you were still an Alpha, too, and we grew up together, and everything else was the same. Would you still love me?” 

Bucky stares at him uneasily. “Steve.” 

Steve bites his lip. 

“Two Alphas…” Bucky starts, but he trails off, and shakes his head. 

“It isn’t right,” Steve finishes. “I know. I _know_.” 

“People who do things like that,” Bucky says, looking wretched. “They—Steve, they’re not right in the head.” 

“But—Bucky,” Steve says helplessly, because this is the heart of it, this is what he can’t stop thinking about these days, even though he knows with everything in him that it’s _wrong_. “If I was born an Alpha like you, or hell, even if you’d been born an Omega like me—I can’t imagine growing up together and not loving you, anyway. I can’t imagine _any_ version of me that wouldn’t love you. Can you?” 

Bucky stares at him. 

Steve stares back, but he doesn’t need to hear the reply. The pain on Bucky’s face is answer enough. 

“You think that’s what queers are?” Bucky asks, quietly. “Just—people that God put in the wrong bodies?” 

Steve shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe.” 

What Steve does know is that if anyone ever suspected—if anyone decided to accuse him and Bucky of being queers, if anyone _believed_ it— 

It wouldn’t be Captain America that was handed the blue ticket, and sent back to the States in quiet disgrace. Steve’s thought about it, in the cold watches of the night—not just about Bucky back in New York, no veteran’s benefits, no job, scorned by the mercies of the church and a pervert in the eyes of society—but also the fact that Steve holds in his hands the most powerful weapon in the war: 

The truth. 

That the man the Nazis have been living in fear of, the man that has been given command over several key factions of the European front, the man that America _trusts_ to win this war—is nothing but an Omega. 

His deeds would mean _nothing_ if the world learned who he really was. He’d be a laughingstock. An Omega, a soldier? A _captain?_

But if it came down to it, and Steve had the choice of letting the world believe that he and Bucky were queers and sentencing Bucky to a life of ridicule and poverty, or keeping up the fiction that is Captain America... there would be no choice at all. Forget the shield. Forget the _war_. 

There are some sacrifices that Steve is never going to be able to make. 

“Tell you one thing,” Bucky says, as he starts to untie the laces of Steve’s boots. “I think I’d make a swell Omega.” 

“ _You?_ ” 

“Sure would. I can cook, I can dance, I can speak a little French…” 

“I’m sorry, who spent lunchtime chugging Coca-Cola and burping the alphabet?” Steve asks. 

Bucky smirks, unrepentant. “Were you not impressed?” 

“You’d be a _terrible_ Omega.” 

“T’as de beaux yeux, tu sais?” Bucky murmurs, looking up at Steve through his lashes. 

Steve rolls his eyes. “It doesn’t work when I _heard_ Dernier tell you that if you said that in a bar, it would get a pretty Omega to go home with you.” 

“Well,” Bucky says, looking utterly pleased, “you’re here, aren’t you?”

Steve flushes, despite himself.

“And—” Bucky pulls off Steve’s other boot, and tosses it across the room. “—it doesn’t look like you’re leaving anytime soon, does it, dollface?” 

Steve sighs, and can’t help the grin that tugs on the corners of his mouth. “You’re impossible.” 

Bucky holds his socked feet and squeezes them tight, looking up at Steve with the widest, bluest eyes. “Stay with me? Just for tonight?” 

And... how is Steve supposed to say no? 

  
  


The desk ends up having paper, a few pencils, a Bible and a deck of playing cards. They sit cross-legged on the bed opposite each other and play several rounds of rummy, and then Bucky plays through an entire game of solitaire while Steve sketches him. They play two rounds of hangman after that, which comes to an end when Steve shoves Bucky off the bed for using the word _luftwaffe_. 

There’s only one station still playing on the radio at this hour, and it’s clearly a prerecorded set, because there’s no commentator between songs, just the faint scratch of the needle on vinyl. 

“The serum gave me a lot of things, but the ability to dance wasn’t one of them,” Steve warns. 

“Roll up your flaps and get over here,” Bucky orders. 

So Steve goes. 

There’s an awkward moment where Steve, who danced with the USO girls for three months straight, automatically starts to wrap an arm around Bucky’s waist, at the same time that Bucky is wrapping one around his. 

They both stop and stare at each other for a moment. Then Bucky uses his elbow to knock Steve’s arm upward, so that Steve’s hand is around his neck, and he tightens his grip on Steve’s waist. 

“The one who can _actually_ dance gets to lead,” Bucky informs him. 

Steve steps on his foot, but since they’re both in their socks, it doesn’t do much. 

Back in New York, Bucky would drag Steve out to a dance hall at least once a month, when they had the money. He’d dance the first few with Steve, and then Steve would go off to wheeze in a corner with a soda while Bucky danced with anyone who would have him—and there were no shortage of people lining up for that job. Steve never minded. Every few songs, Bucky would come back to him and pull him back out onto the dance floor, insisting “This is _our song,_ we have to dance!” 

Tonight, they hold each other close and sway back and forth, gentle and unhurried. They dance their way through Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore, Glenn Miller and Vera Lynn, until the last notes of _The White Cliffs of Dover_ fade away, and the only sound left is the scratching of vinyl, and no song comes next. 

After a full minute of scratching, there’s a click, and then silence. 

No more music comes, but Steve and Bucky don’t break apart for a long, long while after that. 

  
  


It’s almost a year to the date since Steve met Howard Stark. Steve has changed a _lot_ since their first meeting, and not just physically. 

“Okay, but the Hi-Power holds thirteen rounds, compared to eight. That’s almost double your firing capacity,” Howard says. 

“And you need every one of those extra rounds, because the trigger pull makes aiming impossible,” Steve argues. “I can always carry more rounds. I can’t do much for trigger pull.” 

“All that muscle and you can’t account for trigger pull?” Howard asks skeptically. 

“And the hammer snags on things,” Steve adds. “The Walther’s got a concealed hammer, prevents that completely.” 

“Are you kidding me? My super soldier is refusing a gun because he’s afraid of a little hammer bite?” 

“It has more power than aim, it’s heavier, it’s more difficult to service in the field—” 

“Says _who?_ The Browning is literally made off an assembly line, it’s practically made of tinker toys—” 

“I like the Walther,” Steve says stubbornly. 

“It’s a Nazi gun, Steve. Captain America cannot walk around with a gun from a German manufacturer!” 

“Belgian, actually.” 

“ _Nazis_ use it!” 

“And so do I,” Steve replies. “Now can you fix the barrel or not?” 

Howard scowls at the ruined gun sitting on the bench, but grudgingly pulls it closer. “I’ll see what I can do.” 

  
  


The Howling Commandos, being a specialized combat unit of only seven men, are usually directed at highly specific targets for reconnaissance or retrievals, occasionally assassinations. They pass in and out of the true warfront, with its footsoldiers and trenches and the ever-present stench of death, only stopping long enough for supplies or communications. Bombs and machine guns are usually a distant racket. 

But they just so happen to be in the Ardennes in December, stopping over before they’re due to fly out the next day to Southampton for long-awaited R&R, when the Germans launch a surprise attack. 

It begins at five in the morning, with the deafening roar of machine guns. Within minutes, the ground trembles, and then explosives sound. Alarms blare. People are yelling. Steve rolls out of bed and into his boots, and Bucky drops down from the bunk above him at the same time. The bitter cold is meaningless when they rip back the tent flap to reveal a hail of bullets and grenades. The tent across from them is on fire. 

The attack goes on for forty-one days. 

The weather is brutal and supplies dwindle quickly. Every possible road, trail or river is blocked by Germans for eighty-something miles. Steve and the Commandos are put to use anywhere and everywhere their skills can be utilized, and most days Steve spends without seeing a single member of his team. The weeks blur together, but when he thinks back on it, he remembers hunger, and desperation, and cold, and certain, visceral moments that his perfect memory has frozen in time forever. 

The sound of the bridge exploding at his own order, knowing that there were still American soldiers on there, because German tanks had begun to cross and there was simply no time left. 

The press of his face on a dead man’s skin, hiding in a pile of frozen corpses. 

The taste of cold beans from the can, and the exhaustion that came with watching the night horizon lit with flashes and streaks of light, miles away. 

His fingers, fat and numb as they tried to work a needle through yet another tear in his uniform. 

The yelp of the dog Steve shot, and the spray of blood in the air when its vest of explosives went off a minute later, a hundred feet short of its target. 

But most of all, he remembers coming onto battlefields and watching thousands of young faces turn to him, the murmur going through the crowds— _Captain America, he’s really here, that’s him_ —and the ripple of _hope_ that would surge through the ranks. He remembers teenagers, their whiteknuckled grips on their guns, their sunken eyes hanging on to his every word. He remembers sending them into battle. 

By the end of it, over forty thousand of them are dead or missing. 

The day Hitler finally announces a retreat, Steve and the rest of the Commandos are promptly yanked out of Belgium to go after an English spy who’s been kidnapped and is being rapidly transported back to a HYDRA headquarters. As the train pulls out of the station, Steve and the Commandos are dead-eyed and silent. The sounds of the celebrating camp fade away within minutes, and there’s only the sound of the train, taking them toward their next fight. 

There are no vacations in war. 

  
  


In February, Steve and Dum Dum get captured by the Nazis. However, immediately after their capture, a massive blizzard comes down and prevents their transfer to any neighboring facility. Instead, they’re chained up in the single jail cell the outpost seems to have, with a guard who spends most of his time in the anteroom where there’s a wood-burning stove. 

Steve and Dum Dum are pressed together for warmth, for all the good it will do, and Dum Dum is humming _The Battle Hymn of the Republic_. It’s the current anthem of the Howling Commandos—or at least, a modified version of it, written by Gabby after a lice outbreak had forced them to shave all their body hair last week. 

Steve knows the lyrics well. 

_Mine eyes have seen the glory of his bald and shiny head  
_ _It is shining like a beacon and it lights the way ahead  
_ _It will blind those Nazi bastards ‘til we’ve gone and killed them dead  
_ _The Captain marches on!_

Bucky has assured him that he’s still very attractive, no matter how much his ears stick out now. 

“Dum Dum,” he says, after he’s heard the song on loop for about an hour straight. “I appreciate the music, but it’s already been stuck in my head for a week straight, now.” 

“I’m thinkin’ up a new verse,” Dum Dum replies. 

Steve groans. “It doesn’t need more verses.” 

"Maybe you can help. What rhymes with ‘hairy back’?” 

“I don’t have a hairy back!” 

“Aye, not anymore. Anyway, I’ve got ‘merry smack’, and ‘very black’, and ‘bury Jack’, but none of them are sittin’ right. What have you got?” 

"Nothing,” Steve says crossly. 

“Your loss, Cap,” Dum Dum says easily, and goes back to humming. 

Steve lets him cycle through the song a few times more, before he nudges him with his shoulder. “Hey. Listen.” 

“Hm?” 

“Next time they come in here, I’m gonna bargain for your release,” Steve tells him. 

Dum Dum goes abruptly still. “Cap. No.” 

“You’re just collateral to them, another body to feed and transport, and I’ve got… I know what intelligence I can safely tell them, in return.” 

“No fuckin’ way. I’m staying with you, you moron.” 

“No, you’re not. They’re going to release you, and you’re gonna find your way back to an Allied base, let them know everything you saw here, and if they want to come look for me then you can—”

“ _If?_ ” 

"—then you can help with that. But you dying here doesn’t do me any good, and it doesn’t do the war any good, either. You’re too good a soldier to waste like that.” 

“You’re out of your goddamn mind if you think there isn’t half an army preparing to storm this base right now,” Dum Dum says. 

“Good. Then you can go join them.” 

“I don’t like it,” Dum Dum announces. 

“As your Captain, I don’t actually care,” Steve replies. “But I do have a favor to ask.” 

“This should be good.” 

Steve exhales, and struggles to get his manacled hands into his pockets for a moment, but he eventually manages it, and withdrawals a battered envelope. He passes it over to Dum Dum, and says, “It’s—it’s for my family. If you get it to Barnes, he’ll know what to do with it.” 

“Oh, Jesus,” says Dum Dum. 

Steve doesn’t look at him, and with trembling hands he grabs the chain that holds his dog tags, and after a moment of fumbling he manages to get the clasp for that, too. He pulls one of the tags off, as well as the little steel padlock, and then deposits them inside the envelope alongside the letter. 

Dum Dum looks down at it, and then up at Steve. “Captain.” 

“Please,” Steve says. 

Dum Dum exhales, and closes a secure hand around the envelope. “This is gonna kill Barnes. You know that, right?” 

Steve swallows around the sudden lump in his throat. “I know. He’s… he’s a good friend.” 

Dum Dum snorts. “Yeah, we’ve all noticed your… _friendship_.” 

Steve fights the impulse to go rigid at that, and instead forces a smile, like it’s a joke. 

There’s a moment, where Dum Dum stares at him with a conflicted expression, not laughing at the joke, not _moving on_ , and Steve’s heart begins to pound harder. 

“Bucky and I—” Steve starts. 

“Look, Cap,” Dum Dum interrupts. “We all… We’re not idiots, okay?” 

Steve’s mouth is very dry. “I don’t know what you—” 

“Look. Before you turned up, Barnes was gaga over his little Omega back home, Stevie this and Stevie that, every goddamn day. Then _you_ show up, and all of a sudden you and Barnes are best friends and there weren’t no more talk about poor ol’ Stevie back home.” 

Steve can’t say a single word. 

They’d been so _careful_. 

“It ain’t right,” Dum Dum continues. “Two Alphas. You know it, and I know it, and God knows it—and I know you go to church, so I know you know it’s a sin, same as me.” 

Steve feels like he’s having an asthma attack. This can’t be happening. 

“Granted, I don’t know much about it. Jim says his little brother got arrested for sodomy, back in California, but then they did some kinda brain surgery an’ it fucked him up real good. Just sits around and drools, now. So I guess it’s some kinda brain disease? But if it’s a sin, then it’s gotta be a choice, too, right? ‘Cause you’re _choosing_ to do evil.” Dum Dum shrugs, looking far too casual for the way he’s got Steve hanging over a cliff edge right now. “Like I said. I don’t know too much about it.”

Steve can’t say a single word. He’s stuck on the image of Bucky with a scar across his forehead, staring vacantly out a window. Forever. 

Dum Dum snorts. “Look, Cap, you can stop lookin’ so shit scared. We’ve known for months, and we’re not gonna go and tell anyone.” 

“You’re… not?” Steve croaks out. 

“Thought about it,” Dum Dum says, and shrugs. “But what the hell is it gonna do, besides lose us our best shot, and the best leader I’ve ever served under?” 

They’d _thought_ about it. 

Jesus. 

He and Bucky had been inches from losing everything, and they hadn’t even known. 

“Okay,” Steve says shakily. 

“I’ll give him the damn letters, all right?” Dum Dum says, stuffing them into his pocket. “Promise. But don’t try to sell me some bullshit about your family, because I’ve lived in your back pocket for a year and you ain’t ever mentioned so much as a cousin.” 

Steve nods, numbly. “Thanks,” he says eventually. 

“Yeah, well,” Dum Dum says, shrugging his shoulders. “You’re lucky you’re so goddamn likeable, otherwise.” 

They don’t talk anymore, after that. 

It also turns out that Dum Dum wasn’t exactly right, about half an army storming the base, but there are five very pissed off Commandos who turn up a few hours later and rescue their sorry hides. Steve doesn’t miss the fact that after Bucky unlocks both of their manacles, Dum Dum rapidly makes excuses to leave and shuts the door behind himself. Bucky immediately wraps Steve up in a hug, cursing him out as he does, but Steve can only stare at the closed door, and wonder what else he’s missed the last few months. 

  
  


At the end of March, Steve’s next mission directive comes with a note from Peggy paperclipped to the inside, that reads _You were right. Good luck_. 

The mission is to intercept a Schnelizug train that’s supposed to be carrying Arnim Zola through the Alps. The terrain looks like the biggest issue—if they can get on the train itself, then it should be a piece of cake to take out Zola’s guard team and bring him in. 

  
  


They get Zola. 

Steve loses Bucky. 

  
  


He doesn’t remember the trip back to England. 

The Commandos are a constant presence around him when they get back to the base, and it’s not that Steve isn’t _functioning_. He writes his report, and talks to Colonel Phillips, and watches the interrogation of Zola. But sometimes he zones out a little. Sometimes his breaths start to come too fast and his hands start to shake, and he has to close his eyes and count to seven as he inhales, and count back down as he exhales. 

Because Bucky is gone. He’s _gone_ and he’s not coming back.

“Okay, Cap?” Jim asks, punching him in the shoulder. 

Steve nods automatically, forcing his eyes open with a measured breath. 

“The man needs a _drink_ ,” Falsworth declares, and there’s an immediate chorus of agreement. 

Steve can’t actually get drunk, but he lets them drag him out to the Pig & Whistle and buy him a few shots. The conversation comes in fits and starts, and at one point Dum Dum starts to propose a toast but gets clobbered mid-sentence by Jim and Gabby. 

The first opportunity available, Steve sneaks out and heads over to the Whip & Fiddle—their usual haunt, but a few weeks ago it had been bombed out. He stands outside its burnt-out shell for a long moment, staring up at where the second floor used to be. Last summer, he and Bucky had been dancing in each other’s arms to the soft croons of Vera Lynn, but now—

_Now—_

Steve heads into the ruins of the pub, finds two bottles of whiskey and an intact glass, and gets to drinking. 

Peggy finds him, some time later. 

“Steve,” she says softly. “I’m so sorry.” 

Her words hit, the way that none of the other Commandos’ have. 

She’s sorry, because Bucky is dead, and he’s not coming back. She’s sorry, because Steve is the _reason_ he’s dead. 

Steve abandons the glass and downs the rest of the bottle in one long go. 

When he finishes, Peggy is seating herself at the table across from him. He tips the empty bottle at her in salute, and then sets it down. 

“How are you doing?” 

“Well,” Steve says, staring blankly at the empty bottle. “I didn’t jump after him.” 

He regrets that, most of the time, but he knows he can’t say that part out loud. 

“I can’t imagine what you must be feeling,” Peggy says carefully. 

“Not feelin’ anything,” Steve replies. 

He’s not. It’s true. 

He can feel the cracks starting to form around his hazy little bubble, knows there’s a great yawning chasm waiting to open up in his chest—but he knows too that the moment that it breaks open he’s going to fold into himself, and never come back out. He’s not ready for that, not yet. 

“It wasn’t your fault, you know.” 

Steve finally looks at her. “I know you read the reports. That’s not true.” 

“He died fighting by your side, and he wouldn’t have had it any other way. To blame yourself is to take away the dignity of—” 

“ _Please_ ,” Steve chokes out, holding up a hand. He can feel his breathing start to quicken. “Please—don’t.” 

Peggy watches him quietly, but doesn’t say anything else. 

Steve forces his breathing back under control, counting up to seven on the inhale and then back down to one on the exhale, just like he did when he used to get asthma attacks. It’s harder than usual, this time, but he grips the edge of the table and forces himself to get it together. 

“I guess—” he starts, and then has to inhale and exhale again because of the crack in his voice. “I guess this is why they don’t let Omegas go to war, huh?” 

“ _S_ _teve Rogers_. I should slap you for that.” 

“If someone else had led the mission—” 

“Do you want me to recount your service record to you? Because I will. Mission by mission. There is no commander in the history of civilization that has come out of a war without losing a soldier, and as remarkable as you are as a leader and a tactician, you are _no different_ than any of them.” 

“They didn’t have a super serum.” 

“The serum doesn’t make you invincible!” 

Steve shakes his head, and looks away. 

He’s the fastest and strongest man in the world. He’s got a photographic memory, and he can calculate sums faster than a calculator. He can hold his breath for ten minutes straight, and stay awake for seven days in a row, and he can see in the dark, and… 

All these abilities, the serum had given him. And none of it had mattered, in the end. Bucky was still dead. 

“Do you know why I first came to see you, when you were being interrogated back in New York?” Peggy asks. 

Steve, not expecting this, looks up at her. 

He’d always assumed that it had been part of her job. 

“The truth is—I was curious about you, even before the serum,” Peggy says, tipping her head to the side. “You see, I’d known Dr. Erskine for years, and in all that time he’d never before hired a lab assistant. Not once.” 

Steve frowns, struggling to think back to a lifetime ago, when he’d been small and sickly, legs dangling off a stool in the lab while Helen Forrest sang over the radio. 

“Howard said that, too,” he remembers slowly. 

Peggy nods. “Dr. Erskine was a good man, but he was—you must have noticed—he was _fanatical_ about his work. He didn’t need a lab assistant because he didn’t ever leave the lab. He did every bit of work himself. It drove Senator Brandt _mad_. They were always arguing about it, because the Senator insisted that they could get quicker results if Dr. Erskine would just let someone else help. But Dr. Erskine absolutely refused.” 

It makes sense. God, Steve remembers the way he'd seemed to never leave the lab, not even on Friday nights. 

“So you can imagine my surprise—everyone’s surprise—when one day Howard told me that he’d finally gone and hired an assistant.” Peggy smiles at him, a little. “I knew then that I had to come meet you, because anyone who could convince Dr. Erskine to hire them after _years_ of refusing help—I knew they had to be special.” 

“I didn’t convince him to hire me,” Steve says blankly. “He offered.” 

“Exactly,” Peggy agrees. “Howard was intrigued by you, too. What could he have seen in you, we wondered? But we were so busy preparing for the trial that there was never any time, and then there was the assassination and—well, Dr. Erskine was gone in minutes, unfortunately, but you were bleeding out in a pile of broken vials of serum, alive but only just, and Howard said—I remember it, so clearly, he said, ‘This boy’s gotta live’. So we threw you into the Vita-Ray machine and prayed, and by God—Steve, it _worked_.” 

Steve’s never actually heard this half of the story. He was given pieces of information when he woke up, clinical, the bare minimum necessary to piece together his own origin story, but nothing more. He remembers the blood, and the look of terror on Howard Stark’s face, and that it hadn’t hurt so much to die. 

“And you know what?” Peggy says, her eyes a little glassy now. “Ever since that day, you’ve only proven Howard right. I know you didn’t ask to be a super soldier, but Steve, I can’t think of a better person to be Captain America. You’ve done _so much_ good.” 

Steve shakes his head. “But not when it mattered.” 

“His death was not in vain, Steve. His _sacrifice_ led to the capture of one of the most important men in HYDRA, and if we can get him to turn, we could win the _war_.” 

Steve would rather have Bucky, and lose the goddamn war. 

But he tucks that thought away, next to his little fantasy world where he’d let go of the train railing and hit the icy ravine below too, and knew nothing more. 

“Don’t let all this go to waste, Steve,” Peggy urges.

Bucky’s final scream rings in his ears, and Steve thinks, _a waste_. 

He’s loved Bucky for eighteen years, and not a single minute of it was a waste. They were supposed to have a lifetime together. Bucky was his best friend, his partner, his husband, his _mate_. 

And the war stole him. 

_HYDRA_ stole him.

"The last thing I plan to do,” Steve says evenly, "is let it go to waste."

“Good,” Peggy says, and she reaches out to cover his hand, but Steve pulls away, hands curling into fists. “But it’s okay to take some time to—” 

“No,” Steve interrupts. 

“No?” 

“His—I'm going to make it worth something. I'm going to make them _pay_. I don’t care what it takes,” Steve declares, throat struggling to close up but his fury driving the words out anyway, "I’m going to make HYDRA regret the day they ever decided to stop Dr. Erskine’s serum trial. I’m gonna make them _wish_ it was that All American Alpha soldier who’d gotten the serum that day.” 

“Steve—” 

Steve rises abruptly. “I’m going back to the base. Phillips should be done with Zola by now.” 

  
  


On the train ride to the Alps to attack Red Skull’s base, Steve pulls out the letter he’s been carrying for months and months, and unfolds the weathered paper carefully. 

_Dear Mr. Bumes_ , it begins. 

A joke. 

He’s written so many letters like this. When he was nine, and twelve, and twenty-two, and when he’d sat down to write this one the words had come so easily. He’d thought it would be nice to open with a _joke_. Phrases jump out at him like _I’m in a better place,_ and _I’ll always be with you in your heart_ , and _it’s okay to move on._

Jesus. 

What a load of fucking _bullshit_. 

If he had died and left Bucky like this—if he had fallen, and Bucky was here, reading this letter and it was _all he had left_ … 

Steve burns it. 

  
  


When Steve closes his eyes, he sees Bucky falling. When he opens them, he sees the empty space to his right. 

He hasn’t slept since Bucky died. 

  
  


Steve has always known that his best attribute as a fighter, even before he had super strength and speed and all that—the thing that really gets him to victory is the fact that he will throw himself into a fight, and keep coming back for more, no matter how many times he’s tossed out of the ring. He’s been chewed up and spat out more times than he can count, and always, he gets back up and thinks, _I will win this fight, no matter what_. 

This time, though, when he’s crashing through the HYDRA base after Red Skull, taking down dozens of men in the blink of an eye, he’s thinking, _I will win this fight or I’ll die trying_. 

Maybe that’s why he wins. 

He sees little reckless moments slip by, like it’s a film—like when he knows he should hide a beat and wait for covering fire to start, but instead he just runs out. When he throws his shield in a near-impossible gambit to hold the door, leaving him stupidly defenseless in an enclosed area. 

He gets lucky, again and again. 

He’s invincible. 

The fight with Red Skull on the plane is vicious, _brutal_ , and Steve doesn’t feel a single hit he takes. Dying wouldn’t hurt one bit right now. Let it come.

When Red Skull is killed by strange glowing blue cube instead of being ripped limb from limb by Steve’s bare hands, after the plane suddenly opens up to the heavens and a giant blue lightning strike comes down and _zaps_ him out of existence—

Steve is left standing in the plane, alone. 

He’s breathing hard and his hands are shaking—his blood _sings_ with fury—but there’s no one to fight anymore. 

It’s just him, here. Alone. No HYDRA, no Red Skull. 

No Bucky.

A beep from the plane’s console distracts him, and he makes his way over. The blue death cube dissolves through the floor as he walks past it, and Steve pauses to watch it fall into the ocean below. It doesn’t make a single sound as it goes. No flailing, no screaming. It becomes smaller, and smaller, and then disappears into the water. 

The console has multiple screens, but probably the most important one is the one that reads _ZIEL: NEW YORK CITY_. 

He remembers all the bombs loaded and labeled on the deck below. Large enough to take out an entire city. According to the map, he’s fast coming out of the bounds of the Arctic Ocean, and about to fly over Greenland. They can’t have been in the air for more than forty minutes, and that’s hundreds of miles covered. He has probably less than fifteen minutes from New York City. 

There's only one solution.

His hands are steady as he dials the HYDRA base in the Alps. 

Peggy, predictably, does not agree with his decision. 

“Steve, no. Listen. I—I can get Howard, he’ll know what to do.” 

“There’s no time,” Steve says. 

“Give me your coordinates, let me at least _look_ ,” Peggy insists. 

“I promise you,” Steve says, “I swear, if there was a way to bring this plane down on land without a lot of people dying, I’d do it. But there’s not. I didn’t—Peggy, this isn't a distress call. It isn’t a mayday.” 

“This is the very goddamn _definition_ of a mayday, Steve.” 

But Steve has already made up his mind.

He turns the plane downward, and he’s treated to a full view of the icy Arctic Ocean. Several massive icebergs are floating below, pristine and placid. 

Is it better to hit the water, or hit the icebergs? 

Which will kill him faster?

“I called because I wanted to say thank you,” Steve tells her. His tone is calm. It's probably a little weird how calm he sounds. “Thank you, for everything. You vouched for me, back in New York, and you helped me rescue Bucky, and—God, I can’t even count how many times you’ve set my head on straight. I don’t know where I’d be without you.” 

“Steve,” Peggy says, voice breaking. 

“It’s been an honor, to be your friend,” Steve continues. “You’re gonna do—so many amazing things for the world. This is only your beginning, Peggy.” 

He decides to go for the iceberg. 

He’d rather burn than drown. 

“It’s… it’s been an honor to know you, too, Steve,” Peggy says. “God, I. I don’t know what to say. It’s been a privilege to serve with you, and be your friend, and I’m so proud of you and I want you to know that—Steve. Steve, history is going to remember you as a _hero_.” 

“Give Hitler hell for me,” Steve says. “Tell the boys the same.” 

“I will.” 

A few alarms start to go off as he gets closer to the ocean. 

“I’m gonna sign off,” Steve tells her. 

“I’ll stay with you,” Peggy says fiercely. “You’re not going out alone.” 

“No,” Steve says, and puts a finger on the switch. “I know you would, but—I have another call to make. I’m sorry, Peggy.” 

She starts to say something, but Steve has flipped the radio off. 

He sits back in the seat, and slips one hand under the collar of his uniform, pulling at the chain around his neck. The iceberg looms ahead. He hadn’t realized how big it was, from up high. It’s gotta be easily the size of the Chrysler building. 

This is his grave. 

Steve closes his eyes, and wraps his hand around the dog tags, and the little padlock that's still strung alongside them. 

“Hey, Buck.”

He takes in a deep breath, and releases it. 

“I know it’s only been a week, but... I can’t wait to see you again,” he says, and laughs a little. “I know that’s stupid. But I miss you. It’s been—it’s been a really long week, without you.”

The alarms are getting louder, and radio beeps with an incoming call, but Steve just exhales, and inhales. Keeps his eyes closed. Thinks about Brooklyn, and their apartment, the sounds of the city and the warm press of Bucky’s body against his own. 

Home. 

He’s going home.

“I know you’re probably swearin’ up a blue streak right now, watchin’ this from heaven,” Steve whispers. “But, uh. Don’t worry. I’m not scared. I think it’s gonna be real quick. I don’t think it’ll hurt at all.” 

He inhales, and exhales. Smiles. 

“Hey, remember that time—” 


	5. 2012

Steve is not dead. 

Or maybe, this is just hell. 

“You’ve been asleep, Cap,” the man with the eyepatch says, over all the sirens and honking and music and— _people_. “For almost seventy years.” 

Seventy... _years?_

Asleep?

Steve remembers the plane hitting the iceberg. He remembers being half-conscious with a cold rising over him that had flayed him open and left him paralyzed, and he remembers how his lungs had burned and his limbs had thrashed, but there was no escape. He remembers the serum keeping him alive under the water for far longer than he’d thought it would. 

He’d _died_. 

But here he stands, in a city with skyscrapers as tall as the Empire State Building everywhere he looks, with a million improbable movie screens on the buildings and above the sidewalks. The clothes are bright and strange, and none of the men are wearing hats. It’s so _loud_. 

“You gonna be okay?” the man asks, raising his non-eyepatched eyebrow. 

Behind him in the crowd, incongruously, is a person dressed as an extremely realistic Statue of Liberty. 

A movie screen on the side of a building shows an enormous Coca-Cola bottle being poured into a glass. 

_American Eagle Outfitters_. _T-Mobile. The Lion King_. The signs are all electric and glow unearthly bright, even in the daylight. 

Seventy years is… God. 2015?

There are shiny black cars and men all around him in futuristic tactical gear, carrying not-so-futuristic guns at their sides. 

Steve tries to slow his breathing, and focus. 

“Yeah,” he forces himself to reply. 

He’ll be okay. Sure. A century into the future, alive when he should be dead. 

He’s loaded into one of the shiny black cars. As they reverse, Steve spots at least two other Statue of Liberties in the crowd, and a woman wearing nothing but a strategically draped American flag. 

“Buckle up, Cap,” the man with the eyepatch says. 

Steve blinks at him. 

A belt is tugged down and across his chest, like an airplane harness missing half a strap, and clicked into place next to his opposite hip. 

“Seatbelts are mandatory, now,” he’s told. 

“Oh,” Steve says, and tugs at it lightly. It snaps right back into place, like magic. 

The car runs soundlessly, and moves so smoothly down the road it’s like floating in a little silent bubble. 

They pass an enormous flashing sign that says _Subway - N Q R - S 1 2 3 - 7_ , at the intersection of 7th Avenue and 42nd St, that’s when Steve realizes with a start that they’re in _Times Square_. 

Last time Steve had been here was four years ago, and it had been because he’d taken a wrong turn out of Radio City after a matinee, and by the time he’d backtracked to Turtle Bay two brothels and a saloon had offered to hire him. 

Four years ago, or seventy-four years ago? 

The car pulls into an underground parking lot not far from Times Square, and Steve is led through sliding glass doors that open on their own, and up an elevator that has no operator, and down hallways lit with invisible lightbulbs, and eventually to an office so high up that from the window he’s pretty sure he can see New Jersey. 

The man with the eyepatch, who will eventually introduce himself as Nick Fury, sits Steve down and starts to explain about winning the war, and Peggy Carter creating this very agency that Fury himself directs, and Howard Stark searching the waters of the Arctic until the day he died. The year is 2012, and everyone knows the story of Captain America. He’s going to be so amazed by all that science has done for the world. 

“The boys codenamed you King Arthur, you know,” Fury tells him, crossing his arms over his chest and surveying Steve. “I don’t know if sleeping in that ice was anything like Avalon, but you sure as hell came back to us in a time of need, Cap. We’re going to need all the men we can get, to fight what’s coming.” 

Another war. 

And they want him to fight. 

Steve stares at him, and thinks, _You should have left me in the ice_. 

  
  


He gets shuffled off to medical, next, where he meets a barrel-chested Alpha in a white coat who introduces himself as Dr. Kraus. 

“This’ll be the easiest medical history I ever take,” he jokes, and Steve tries to make the muscles of his face smile back. 

Dr. Kraus taps at a flat rectangle—it looks like the iPad Steve had been given by Fury just an hour ago, but not quite as sleek—and snorts a little to himself. “Here we go—allergies? No. Medical problems? No. Medications? No. No, and no, and no… Good Lord, if only all my patients were this easy.” 

“Sorry,” Steve says. “But I do have the… blockers. That I take.” 

Dr. Kraus looks up, frowning. 

“The suppressants,” Steve clarifies. 

“Ah. You took rut suppressants?” Dr. Kraus asks. 

Steve stares at him. 

Seventy years and they _don’t know?_

“Captain?” Dr. Kraus asks. 

“Can I see my chart?” Steve asks, rising abruptly. 

“I—of course,” Dr. Kraus says, and though he looks startled he hands over the tablet. “Your medical records are entirely your own, Captain. Anything that you tell me in this room will remain completely confidential.”

 _Steven G. Rogers_ , the file says at the top. 

Below that, _DOB: 07/04/1918._

They really don’t know. 

For all the top-secret files Fury had produced, for all the classified information he’d seemed to have at his fingertips—this secret has somehow survived. 

“Captain?” Dr. Kraus asks. 

Steve swallows, and hands the tablet back to him. 

“As I said, we take patient confidentiality very seriously nowadays. There are federal laws in place to protect patient rights, and I could—quite rightly—lose my license for violating your privacy,” Dr. Kraus tells him. “Anything you tell me would be in complete confidence.” 

“Thank you,” Steve says, a little numbly. 

“Well. Tell you what, let me start over,” Dr. Kraus says, lowering the tablet and looking up at him. He offers a gentle smile, and readies the pen. “Captain Rogers. Do you have any allergies?” 

“No,” Steve says. 

“Do you have any medical problems?” 

“No.” 

“Do you take any medications?” 

“No,” Steve says. 

Dr. Kraus looks at him for a moment, and then accepts it with the nod of his head and asks, “Have you ever had surgery before?” 

  
  


He does the math in his head. 

He’d last gotten a dose of his blocker from a supply drop point in Saint-Quentin, when he’d gotten the letter from Peggy with the mission directive for capturing Zola. Then—then the mission. And then the ice. He’s been told that it took them almost two weeks to defrost him. 

He probably has two weeks left of passing as an Alpha. Maybe less.

The voice in the back of his head says, _What if you told them._

And what if once they knew the truth, once they knew he was nothing more than a fraud, a failure, an _Omega_ —they no longer wanted him. They let him go back to sleep. They got rid of him forever. 

_What if they put you back in chains._

_What if they send you to war anyway._

  
  


He lays awake, the first night, and stares at the ceiling of the little empty room he’d been given. 

Everyone is dead. 

Not just Bucky. 

_Everyone_. 

The enormity of it consumes him. He presses his pillow over his face and holds his breath until his lungs burn and his limbs jerk and his ears roar, and he’s back under the water, drowning, dying, it’s over, it’s finally _over_ —

And then his traitorous mouth snaps open and air rushes in, and Steve is left, gasping, alive. Still alone. 

  
  


On his second day in the twenty-first century, Steve is shuffled from room to room inside the giant skyscraper. He is given a ‘PowerPoint’ on seventy years of history, which is both overwhelmingly thorough and yet not nearly detailed enough at the same time. Steve misses the entire second half of the 1940s after he’s hit with the sentence, “And then America deployed two atomic bombs on Japan, killing over two hundred thousand civilians, which led to the Japanese surrendering to the Allies six days later.” By the time he tunes back in, Dwight Esienhower is President of the United States. 

Between history lessons Steve is introduced to various important Alphas, who all want to shake his hand and thank him for his service, and the pictures they pose for are taken with cameras smaller than the palm of his hand. He is also given a formal debriefing on SHIELD, and signs his own weight in paperwork. He gets a cellphone, a driver’s license, and several million dollars in backpay from the government. 

At night, finally alone again, Steve sits on his bed and stares at his little room, which he’s learned is actually the on-call room for the head of security at the New York SHIELD location, and only being made temporarily available to him. He looks at the desk, which holds no letter openers or scissors, and then up at the ceilings, made of some kind of flimsy-looking plastic and foam tiles, to the bathroom that has no bathtub and the razor on the sink that’s designed to be so safe it barely cuts actual hair. 

He wonders if the safeguards are on purpose. 

But then, so what if it is?

The next day, Steve is put in the back of an auditorium filled with new SHIELD recruits, and he listens to more PowerPoints, this time on modern warfare and intelligence. They cover mission protocols, scopes of combat, universal communication specs, and a whole slew of other things that Steve had had to develop on his own during the war, things he never had the time to neatly define and categorize the way these people have. In the afternoon, he’s shuffled off to the armory with a dozen other recruits to get fitted for tactical gear, and after that to the shooting range where he’s run through at least two dozen types of firearms.

At night, he thinks about the gun that had been in his holster, on the plane. Three bullets left inside. It hadn’t even occurred to him, at the time, because it hadn’t… it hadn’t _really_ been like that. Because a bullet to the brain was cowardly. Because he’d thought the crash would have been enough. 

  
  


**_Steven Grant Rogers_ ** _was born July 4th, 1918, in the_ _Lower East Side_ _of_ _Manhattan_ _,_ _New York_ _, to Eliza and Benjamin Rogers, of English descent. Not much is known about his early life, but records indicate that he graduated from_ _George Washington High School_ _in 1936_ _[_ _8_ _]_ _. He was recruited to the_ _Army_ _i_ _n 1943, and how Rogers spent those intervening years is largely unknown, though it has been speculated that he may have worked in the medical field, given widespread firsthand accounts of his propensity for assisting_ _battlefield medics_ _[_ _9_ _]_ _. Medical school rosters of the time have been exhaustively reviewed, but no definitive record of Rogers attending has ever been found_ _[_ _10_ _]_ _. He also held a well-known love of_ _baseball_ _[_ _11_ _,_ _12_ _]_ _, and several recovered documents indicate a talent for drawing_ _[1_ _3_ _,_ _14_ _,_ _15_ _]_ _. Historians have never located any conclusive evidence that he ever took a_ _mate_ _, and multiple accounts from his_ _USO Tour_ _describe him as “courteous” but “solitary”_ _[16_ _,_ _17_ _]_ _._ _Jean Caroll_ _, who went on to star in_ _Miss Liberty_ _and_ _Kiss Me, Kate_ _, famously said of Rogers, “He was a decent fella, real polite, but when God was handing out, you know, Romance, the man was off standing in line for a second helping of Biceps.”_ _[18_ _]_

Steve remembers Jean—a redheaded Omega from Atlanta, one of the best singers in the chorus, with a predilection for bubble gum. He’d walked her home from rehearsal more than once. 

When he taps her name, he’s taken to another Wikipedia page, which shows a beautiful black and white headshot and opens with the words **_Jean Caroll_ ** _(born_ **_Jean-Beth Caroll_ ** _; June 6, 1915 - December 17, 1969)_ —

And Steve can’t read any further. 

He shuts the tablet off, and closes his eyes. Breathes in, counts up to seven, and then breathes out and counts back down to one. Over and over. 

  
  


Death by suicide was a mortal sin, according to the Catholic Church. Taking one’s own life was like saying you knew better than God, that you _were_ God, and such an act meant your soul would never be allowed into heaven. 

In his darkest moments, Steve wonders if he came out of the ice with a soul at all. 

  
  


Fury finds him in the gym at three in the morning, because Steve has found exercising to be the best alternative to sleeping, these days. The fact that he’s so easily found doesn’t really surprise him. No one has exactly _said_ that he’s being monitored twenty-four seven, but Steve isn’t an idiot. Cameras in the future may be small, but he can still spot them, and they seem to be nearly ubiquitous in the SHIELD facility. 

Fury has a stack of files and a grim expression, and Steve knows exactly what it means. 

They didn’t search the ice for sixty-seven years for Steve Rogers, after all. 

They had been looking for Captain America. 

Steve _doesn’t_ expect to open up the first page and see a picture of the blue death cube that had killed Schmidt before his eyes, only two weeks ago (sixty-seven years ago). He freezes at the picture of it, glossy and colorful and not at all from 1945. 

“Howard Stark fished that out of the ocean when he was looking for you,” Fury tells him, and Steve thinks of Howard, with his cigars and his terrible jokes, and with that comes thoughts of Peggy and Dum Dum and— 

He breathes in, and counts to seven. 

Fury tells him that the blue cube is called a Tesseract. It’s powerful, and it’s been stolen by an alien, and Steve has been drafted as part of the retrieval team. As the _head_ of the retrieval team. The whole world is at stake, if they lose. 

“There’s one thing,” Steve says, closing the file. He pauses, and then swallows and forces himself to look up and meet Fury’s eye. “There’s one thing that I’ll need, if I do this.” 

Fury stares back at him, expectant. 

“Before the war—” Steve begins, and then stops because the grief threatens to overwhelm in that moment. He picks a different start, instead. “What you should know, sir, is that I wasn’t born an Alpha.” 

Fury doesn’t seem like the kind of man to be easily surprised, but Steve’s certainly done it. 

“Biologically, I’m—” Steve stutters to a halt, shame rising in his chest, but he pushes forward. “I’m—biologically, I’m an Omega. But after the serum—it made me look like _this_ , and Stark made me a—a drug, something that made me smell like a real Alpha, too. So I could be Captain America. It was top secret. _No one_ knew. If it had ever gotten out that I was—” 

An Omega. A _fraud_. 

Steve pushes forward, setting his jaw. “So if you want Captain America, sir, you’ve got about a week left of him, unless you can dig up more of Stark’s formula.” 

Fury stares at him, eyebrows sky high. 

“You’re telling me,” he says eventually, “that Captain America is _transgender?_ ” 

Steve blinks at him. “I’m what?” 

“Jesus,” Fury says, which is more like what Steve was expecting. 

Before the war, this is when he would have felt the hot rise of fury at _anyone_ questioning what an Omega could do, but now it’s like all his guts have been scooped out right along with his heart, and all that’s left is cold, sober determination.

So he takes in a deep breath, and says, “Sir, I can do the job, same as any Alpha. I’m still a super soldier, I still led one of the most elite combat units in the war, and I was one of the leading commanders in the Battle of the Bulge, and—” 

“All right, all right,” Fury interrupts, irritated. “I don’t actually need a lecture on LGBT rights, Cap. Believe it or not, we’ve made a little progress on that front since 1945.” 

“L… G… BT?” Steve repeats.

Fury exhales, and crosses his arms over chest. “Suffice to say, you’re actually not the only one in this situation.” 

“I’m _not?_ ” 

“Well. It’s not exactly _common_ ,” Fury allows, tipping his head to the side. “And society is unfortunately still full of fucking idiots, so I can’t say it’s exactly accepted, either. A lot of people would _not_ be happy if Captain America came out of the closet.” 

Steve wrestles with the idiom, and the closest he can figure is that ‘come out of the closet’ is slang for ‘reveal intensely private information’. 

“Come out of the closet, as… an Omega?” Steve asks.

“As a _transgendered_ person,” Fury corrects. “Look. I’m not a counselor, Cap, and we don’t have time for me to try anyway, so the therapy is going to have to wait until the world isn’t on the brink of an alien invasion. What I can tell you is that there’s definitely modern medicine available to help you pass as an Alpha, and I can get it for you.”

“Oh,” Steve says. “Really?” 

“Easy,” Fury replies. 

“And this stays just between us?” Steve asks, thinking uneasily about all the cameras and files and three hundred million results that appear on Google when he searches his own name. “They always said, if it were to get out that I was—” 

Fury snorts. “Even if I planned to tell someone, Cap, I don’t know who’d believe it.” 

“Off the record,” Steve says. 

“Off the record,” Fury confirms. 

Okay. 

Okay, then. 

Time to be Captain America again. 

  
  


Steve studies the briefing. He tells himself that he’s going to do his best to stop Loki, and save all these Future People and their strange clothes and their loud music. He is a soldier, with orders, and he will get the job done. The time for idly mourning the lack of straight razors or letter openers in his room is over.

But if the mission calls for it—

If there’s no other way—

If he has _no other choice_ —

  
  


But this time, if he has to bring a plane of bombs down into the ocean, he’s not trusting the impact to do the job. He’s going to use his gun and finish it properly. 

  
  


The new suit clings to him like a second skin—breathable, flexible, half as heavy as his old one—and as he pulls up the back zip, the uniform pulls tighter and tighter around his ribcage until he’s completely encased. The fabric stretches and bunches with every little movement. It should feel constricting, but instead it feels like it’s all that’s holding him together. 

He can do this. 

He can be a soldier again. 

(Beneath the suit, underneath the plates of armor that have been sewn into it, underneath the moisture-wicking lining and underneath the quick-drying compression base layer, are his dog tags, recovered from the crash and returned to him only yesterday. He feels the press of them against his sternum with every breath, tucked secret and safe against his heart.) 

So Captain America goes down and battles Loki in Germany with Romanov. He fights hard, as hard as he ever has, and in a way it feels _good_ to be back in this role again. He has an objective, an opponent, a battlefield, and he knows the weapons in play. 

All he has to do is win, or die trying. 

  
  


Steve knew that Howard Stark’s son was a modern day ‘superhero’, knew that he’d taken all the wealth and genius he’d inherited and funneled it into the Iron Man project, and he knew that Fury had some sort of tab on him that he hadn’t yet felt the need to pull, not even for a mission like this. So Tony Stark showing up in Germany to help capture Loki is a bit of a surprise, but not as much as it could have been. 

It’s certainly not as much of a surprise as what Steve learns up in the Quinjet, when the faceshield comes up for the first time and Steve realizes that his cursory research had left out one very key fact. 

“You’re an Omega!” Steve blurts out, _staring_. 

The scent is unmistakable. 

But he’s CEO of his own company. He’s a premier weapons designer. He’s a world-famous _superhero_. How can he be—

“Okay,” Stark says, with an expression of disbelief. “Wow. Uh. Who had ‘Raging Sexism’ down for Resurrected Captain America Bingo?” 

“What?” says Steve. 

“I guess they left this out of your orientation packet, Cap, but things have changed a bit since Ye Olden Times. Omegas can vote now, and own property, and hey—look!” Stark’s entire helmet tucks itself away, and Stark jabs a finger at the bare skin of his neck. “We’re not cattle anymore! Because—newsflash—Omegas are _just the same_ as Alphas and Betas.” 

“I—” 

“Let me blow your sad little Alpha mind, here. I went to college. I have a Master’s Degree. I’ve had a _lot_ of sex with random strangers, and I used birth control, and I voted in favor of abortion. I was CEO of Stark Industries, a Fortune _Four_ company, I was _Time’s_ Person of the Year two years ago, I am a _literal superhero_ —” 

"Stark—”

“—and I am also dating the world’s most amazing woman, who also happens to be a Beta, because Omegas don’t need _Alphas_ to make them happy!” 

“I know,” Steve says, quickly, before Stark can keep going. “I know, I’m sorry. I was just—surprised.” 

He looks over to Romanov, who stares back at him unsympathetically. 

“Sure,” Stark says, sarcastically. “‘Surprised’. You might want to try to keep a lid on that _surprise_ when you meet the President of the United States, bucko.” 

Steve stares at him in confusion. “He’s not an Omega.” 

“No, he’s African American,” Stark says, gleeful. “And just _wait_ until you hear who he let into the military last year—” 

“Okay, Stark,” Romanov snaps. 

“The gays!” 

“ _Stark!_ ” Romanov barks. “We can put him through the cultural diversity seminar later. Put your helmet back on, I’m getting strange readings from the—” 

And of course, that’s when the back of the quinjet flies open, and the God of Thunder storms in, grabs Loki by the throat, and then flies off with his magic hammer. 

  
  


Things do not improve from there. 

Steve is supposed to lead these people, and he understands intellectually how he _should_ be handling things, but at every turn he screws it up. He can’t seem to stop. 

Thor, who clearly still holds love for his brother, is treated too aggressively, alienated too quickly for his differences. Stark, in addition to thinking that Steve is a monumental asshole, has forgotten the cube entirely, instead focused on conspiracy theories about SHIELD itself—and Steve reacts badly to that, he knows he does, but he’s barely functioning as it is, and all he wants to do is be a _soldier_ right now. He’s inflexible at exactly the wrong moment. Banner, a gentle soul, intellectual, responds to Stark’s neat runs of logic in the face of Steve’s panicked denials. Romanov dismisses Steve as wholly incompetent, and hares off to provoke Loki on her own. 

And in the bowels of the helicarrier, there are weapons that Steve thought he’d left behind in 1945. 

“You forced our hand,” Fury says—tries to defend his plans for _nuclear warfare_. “We had to come up with something.” 

“Nuclear deterrent,” Stark scoffs. “Because that always calms everyone down.” 

“Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark?” 

“I’m sure if he still made weapons, Stark would be neck deep in this,” Steve snipes, and even as the words leave his mouth he knows they’re a mistake, but he can’t _help_ it. 

It deteriorates further, when Steve lashes out at Fury, too, and then the whole group of them are going at it with a viciousness that makes Steve sick, but he can’t seem to stop. It feels good. He wants to _hurt_ them, and the more he lashes out the better he feels. 

(In the back of his brain, he thinks, _This is why you should never have been a captain. This is why you failed. This is why Bucky died._ )

And then Stark _touches_ him, lays a hand on his shoulder, and Steve is fucking done. 

“What’s the matter, Cap? Can’t handle an Omega speaking their mind for once?” Stark sneers. 

“You know, that’s getting real old.” 

“Yeah, well, so’s bigotry, and yet here you still are.” 

“Believe me, Stark, you’ve got a list of things wrong with you, and your gender doesn’t even hit the top ten. Take away that big suit of yours, and what’s left?” 

“Genius. Billionaire. Playboy. Philanthropist.” 

“I know guys with none of that worth _ten_ of you.” 

Even as Steve says it, he can see that it cuts. He should stop, he _knows_ he should stop, this isn’t the leader he wants to be, but he sees the hurt in Stark’s eyes and he’s viciously, savagely pleased. 

Let it hurt. Let him be devastated. Let him feel a _fraction_ of the howling in Steve’s soul right now, and let him drown with it too. 

  
  


It’s dawn. The ship is down an engine and falling toward the Earth, and Stark is their only hope to fix it. The Hulk is destroying large swathes of the helicarrier, and last time Steve saw Romanov she was frantically trying to dodge him. She might be dead. Thor is God knows where. Fury is demanding updates and being met with radio silence. And Steve is here, on a ruined maintenance platform, being overrun by Loki’s men as he waits for Stark to give him the word to pull the red lever. 

He fights hard. He _does_. There are a thousand people on this ship who are all going to die if it crashes, and if the ship crashes then even the slimmest chance of defeating Loki goes down with it. So Steve bashes heads in, he shoots, he impales them with rebar and breaks their legs with his bare hands. 

But he slips, just for a second, only realizes it when he’s sliding off the railing and—

 _Falling_. 

A cable whips out before his eyes, and on a reflex, Steve catches it. 

He dangles in the air, clinging, and the shock sets in. 

Why had he grabbed it?

Why is he _still holding on?_

Steve stares at his hands, knuckles white, holding onto the cable in a death grip that is of their own accord. Beyond it, the ship, a smoking wreck with an even more ruined team within it. Then he looks down. 

Thirty thousand feet down. 

The new uniform didn’t come with a holster. Steve has no promise of a gun, but he thinks thirty thousand feet would do the trick. 

And still, he isn’t letting go. 

Shots are being fired at him, and Steve can’t exactly dodge them. He’s swinging in the wind. 

“Barton is out,” Romanov says in his ear. 

_Dead_ , Steve wonders, _or unconscious?_

At least Romanov is alive. 

Steve’s hands convulse on the rope, and he breathes in, counts to seven slowly. As his chest fills, his dog tags press against his sternum. 

_“I don’t want you to get hurt,” Bucky had whispered._

_“I heal. Better than you. Better than anyone.”_

_“You can still die.”_

_“I’m not gonna die,” Steve had insisted, so young and impassioned. So stupid._

God, and more right than he ever could have imagined. He’s escaped death a thousand impossible times. Even a plane crash and seventy years in ice hadn’t done it, and here he is again, thirty thousand feet in the air, saved by a one in a million grab at a loose cable, he _can’t just fucking die_.

“Cap, I need the lever!” Stark calls. 

Right. 

_Right_. 

This isn’t the time for this. If he doesn’t get back up there, Stark is going to get sliced to death in the engine. 

Steve starts climbing the rope, back toward the ship. 

“Lever, please.”

“I need a minute!”

“Lever!” Stark yells, thinly panicked. “Lever, now!” 

Steve clears the last bit of distance with a flying leap, and takes out two of Loki’s men as he does. A shot hits him in the chest, but with his armored suit it only winds him. He flings out an arm blindly, manages to cut the man across the neck, and the guy goes down hard. Shots reign down on him, but Steve ignores it and wrenches the lever down. 

Half a minute later, a blur of red and gold streaks over him, and then the hail of bullets stops. 

Steve kneels on the grate, hanging onto the lever, and stares down at the ground below. 

_Not today_ , he thinks. _Maybe tomorrow, but not today_. 

  
  


They hit their stride during the battle against the Chitauri. It helps, probably, that there’s no longer any _time_ for petty arguments, because the citizens of New York City are actively being killed before their eyes. Their objective is clear. 

Steve was always supposed to act as their leader, but up until now, he’s never felt like it, and he’s certainly not been acknowledged as such. Unlike the Commandos, who gamely supported Steve as their Captain until Steve was ready to stand on his own—these are a group of people who demand proof of competence _first_. Steve gets that, now. 

He works as hard as he can during the battle to optimize every aspect of their team. 

Romanov, he realizes, does not easily adjust her fighting style from solo to partner. She excels at hand-to-hand combat and does best when given short-term goals that can be accomplished alone. 

Thor has the weight of a thousand years behind every swing of his hammer, and he directs the flow of battle with an ease that is breathtaking. He requires very little direction, and at times seems to read Steve’s mind before the actual order can be given. He’s quickly managing half the battlefield on his own. 

Barton, Steve is the least familiar with, so he sticks him on surveillance. But as the battle rages on, Steve gets the sense that he’s an incredibly creative and resourceful fighter, but similar to Romanov in that he’s clearly used to working alone. 

Stark is… a wild card. Does not easily take direction unless it happens to line up with his own priorities, but luckily, his priorities are usually the same as Steve’s. 

And, well. Hulk. He also does not easily take direction unless it happens to line up with his own priorities. Luckily, in this case, his priority is to smash as many of the Chitauri as possible. 

Steve does his absolute best to direct his team according to their strengths, and adjust as he learns more about them over the course of the battle, all the while doing his own part to take out as many of the Chitauri as he can. He’s nearly killed a hundred times over, but every time a blade flashes before his eyes, or a laser beam singes past he side, he thinks— _not today_. 

In the end, Stark disappears into a hole in the sky, and doesn’t come back out. Steve gives the order to close the portal, and thinks of the bridge in the Ardennes, where he’d ordered the death of at least a dozen American soldiers to prevent the invasion of a thousand Germans. 

But Stark survives. 

Loki is captured. 

And at the end of the day, Steve has five pairs of eyes on him, waiting for orders. He has a team again. 

  
  


Only this time, there’s no Southampton. There’s no Whip & Fiddle, and there’s no army barracks, and the Avengers all have their own lives, when the Earth doesn’t need saving. Thor goes back to Asgard with his brother, Romanov and Barton are pulled onto a mission, Stark goes back to running his Fortune Four company, and he takes Banner with him. 

Two days after the Chitauri attempted to invade, Steve sits in his SHIELD-gifted apartment in Midtown, and takes stock of the situation. 

There are still no letter openers, no straight razors, and no cutlery in his kitchen with which to cut himself. He was not given a personal firearm to take home. There are no beams from which to hang himself. 

He wonders how much rat poison you can legally buy in one go, nowadays.

But then there’s an ungodly beeping from just outside his window, and Steve discovers a construction crew just below his apartment, beginning to work through a pile of rubble. 

He looks down at this phone, and the Google search bar that says _ra_. 

Then he looks back at the construction crew, and the four men that are securing chains around a stoplight sitting in a cratered sidewalk. The broken glass, the alien corpses, and the gash in the pavement that exposes a cobblestone road that belongs to the city Steve used to know. 

Okay. 

_Not today,_ he thinks, and rolls up his sleeves to go out and help. _Maybe tomorrow, but not today._

  
  


Steve sees Tony Stark again nearly a month later, at a benefit dinner that SHIELD has instructed him to attend. Steve has been given a list of the people in attendance, and profiles for those with whom SHIELD would like Captain America to be on good terms. 

Tony Stark isn’t on that list, so when Steve catches sight of him alone on a balcony, he snags two flutes of champagne off the closest waiter, and heads for the exit. 

Stark is on the phone with someone, so Steve sets the second flute of champagne on the ledge and indulges in his own, taking in the view. It’s a warm May evening, overcast, with enough of an intermittent drizzle to keep most of the crowds indoors. With the lingering mist, the city lights look especially nice. 

To the south, the Empire State Building is lit up like a rainbow, as usual, which Steve finds to be more disturbing than anything else in this new skyline. It flashes tiers of red, green and blue, over and over. To the east is the Chrysler Building, which is lit up a sensible white, at least, and just north of that is Stark Tower, still missing the S-T-R-K. 

If Steve looks hard enough, he’s pretty sure he can see the rebuilt entrance to the 28th St Subway Station, which was the last project he’d helped with before SHIELD had pulled him onto active duty. It had been entirely collapsed in during the Battle of the Chitauri, and during the cleanup process Steve had learned several things about the twenty-first century, including what a Duane Reade was, what a _cronut_ was, and that the subways no longer use tokens, but little yellow swipey plastic cards. 

Stark’s voice is a soft, human thing over the distant symphony of city sounds. 

“—no, listen, I was in Crush the other day, and the guy ahead of me was asking for a recommendation, and the first thing the sommelier asked him was, ‘How much money are you willing to spend?’ I had to step out and make sure I wasn’t accidentally in _Trader Joe’s_ . This city has _no_ appreciation for wine, Pep. Wha— _yes_ , I went shopping for my own wine.” A pause. “No, I didn’t _lose a bet._ This is—that is senseless defamation. Slander.” 

Steve grips his flute a little tighter—but not too tight—and takes in a careful breath. His dog tags are an ever-present weight against his sternum.

He’d come out here expecting a reprieve, not a sharp reminder of what he’s lost. 

“I expect an apology in the form of an excellent vintage—like that Cabernet we had last year, with the black cherries and that little bit of anise? Oooh, that was good stuff. Bring me two.” 

Steve finishes the rest of his champagne, which mostly tastes like fizz, and not at all like… fruits, or spices, or whatever. Tannins? Or is that whiskey? 

He wonders what Stark’s palette would have thought of Mrs. MacPhearson’s bathtub gin. The 1934 vintage had been particularly vile. 

“Anyway, I should go, Pep,” Stark says. “Some old geezer can’t take a hint over here. Uh-huh. Yep. Love you.” 

Steve looks over, and is surprised to see that Stark actually has no phone to put away, but instead taps something on his ear. He hopes desperately that this isn’t some new technology that’s going to phase out cell phones, because he’s only just gotten the hang of his iPhone. 

“You didn’t have to hang up,” Steve says. “I was just looking for a break from…” He waves a hand behind him, and lets that be explanation enough. 

“Anyone who brings me alcohol gets at least fifteen seconds of my time,” Stark replies, taking the champagne off the ledge, and then downing it in one. 

Steve doesn’t know what to say to that. 

Stark sets the glass down on the ledge, and eyes Steve. A full beat passes, and his eyebrows go up. “Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Five seconds left.” 

“How are you?” Steve tries. 

“Super. How are _you?_ ” 

“Um. Good,” Steve says, which isn’t true, but it also doesn’t matter to anyone currently alive. “Keeping busy.” 

“Uh-huh. Heard you’re working for SHIELD.” 

“Yeah,” Steve says lamely. He decides to try a little harder. “Well. There isn’t a lot of work for old geezers, these days.” 

Stark snorts. “Ha _ha_. Yeah, like you couldn’t have just retired with the backpay they gave you. If I was in _your_ shoes, I would have been on the first flight to Mykonos.” 

“No, you wouldn’t have,” Steve replies, frowning at him. 

Stark laughs uncomfortably. “Pretty sure I woulda been, buddy.” 

He wouldn’t have been. If Steve has learned anything about Stark, it’s this.

“Your dad was the same way, you know,” Steve tells him. “He was all splash on the outside, but—” 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Stark interrupts, holding up both hands. “I know we’re still waiting for your memantine to kick in, gramps, but the first rule of Conversations with Tony Stark is that the old man is off limits. Okay? Okay.” 

“Really?” Steve is genuinely surprised. 

Howard had been—well, maybe a little egotistical, maybe a little entrepreneurial at heart, but he’d been a good friend. 

“One time warning,” Stark says, with a hard edge to his voice, now. 

“Right. Okay.” Steve switches tracks. “Well, I also wanted to apologize, for—what happened, when we met.” 

Stark relaxes, then, looking entertained. “Uhhhhh-huh. Which part?” 

“For—when your helmet came down, and I realized your—” Steve has just learned this term, so hopefully he’s using it correctly. “ _—secondary gender_. I didn’t mean to offend you. I was just. Well. In my time, an Omega would never have been a superhero. It took me by surprise.” 

The irony of these words coming from his own mouth is _not_ lost on him. 

Stark, for his part, does not look appeased. 

“In a good way!” Steve adds hastily. “I’ve always thought that Omegas were just as good as Alphas and Betas, just—just the same. So. I think it’s really great that you’ve done everything that you have. You should be proud.” 

Stark surveys him for a moment, looking only fractionally happier. “Well,” he says eventually, shifting his stance. “I’ve heard less condescending things from worse people, I guess.” 

Steve holds in a sigh of frustration. 

There’s _so much_ _more_ that he wants to say. 

Because the truth that he’s realized, even in this short time, is that Stark is the exception rather than the rule. For Steve, it’s unheard of that an Omega would hold any kind of college degree, let alone run a multimillion (billion?) dollar company, or be publicly lauded as a superhero, or even something as simple as attending a benefit dinner, alone, unmated, not as eye candy but as a businessman. Steve thinks it’s _amazing_. 

But just as having an African American president hadn’t fixed racism, Stark is one in a million. Omegas are still underpaid, underrepresented, the disproportionate victims of crimes, _discriminated_ against, and—

And Steve is no longer one of them. 

He’s an Alpha. He’s part of the _problem_. 

And he doesn’t know how to put into words for Stark how his admiration comes straight from his heart—the heart that kept him going through fistfights in the unemployment office, and picket lines, and civil rights marches, and right up to the US Army Office because Steve had believed with everything in him that Omegas could be Army nurses, too, _goddammit_. Stark is everything Steve had ever hoped for, and it makes him so proud it almost physically hurts. 

But that can’t come from an Alpha. That isn’t Steve’s place now.

“Oh, don’t look so depressed,” Stark tells him, the friendliest he’s been all night. “You did better than most, and they didn’t have the excuse of being a direct transplant from Band of Brothers.” 

“Thanks,” Steve says hollowly. 

Stark laughs and pats his shoulder. 

Steve barely suppresses his flinch, and fights through the nausea to give him a smile in return. 

Physical contact isn’t his best thing, these days. 

“Anyway, I think I’ve given you about five minutes too many, which means you owe me a _lot_ of alcohol in the future, Rogers. I expect something better than whatever this carbonated Welch’s shit is here—I know where you live, and I know you’re good for it. Drop it by the Tower sometime. Anytime. Door’s always open. Night!” 

And then Stark disappears, leaving his glass abandoned on the balcony ledge. 

Steve picks it up, carefully slotting it into the same hand as the other, stares out into the city for another moment, before inhaling and following Stark back into the party. 

  
  


At home, Steve sits down on his bed and slides a hand under his pillow. 

Stark’s words are playing over and over in his head: _Uh-huh. Yep. Love you._ The carelessness of it cuts him to the bone. The obliviousness. Steve would _kill_ for five more minutes with Bucky, and Stark spends his so easily, so _wastefully_ —

His hands shake, and his heart is pounding. Breathing in is like opening his lungs underwater, but he counts through it, _one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,_ then _six, five, four, three, two, one_. 

In his hands, the gun is heavy and cool. Steve grips the base of it, and with trembling fingers he hits the release button, and watches the magazine slide out. Thirteen golden bullets shine up at him. 

Steve swallows. Exhales. Inhales, easier now. 

It’ll be okay. 

He has an escape, if he needs it. Being alive in 2012 is a choice, it’s _his_ choice. 

He slides the magazine back in with steadier hands, flips the safety on, and places it back under his pillow

  
  


At SHIELD, Agent Robinson is one of the lead hand-to-hand instructors, and Steve’s been lucky enough to train with her on and off for the last few weeks. She’s a master of seven different forms of martial arts, and has been happy to help Steve expand his repertoire—which was basically an amalgamation of Things Bucky Taught Me in Brooklyn, and Things I Tried That Accidentally Worked. She’s patient, and funny, and likes to text Steve YouTube clips of her favorite stunt reels. 

They’re changing in the locker room after a late-night session of Krav Maga, and Steve is feeling pretty good, so he asks. 

“Agent Robinson—” 

“ _Ivy._ ” 

“Ivy,” Steve repeats, as always. “Are there any Omega field agents, at SHIELD?” 

“Nah,” Agent Robinson says, tugging her bra up over her head. 

Steve averts his eyes. “None?” 

“I mean, it’s not against the rules, not anymore, and we get them as recruits every so often,” Agent Robinson says. Her voice is muffled like she’s pulling something over her face. “But they always wash out.” 

“Oh,” Steve says. 

“Some people get real up in arms about it, say it’s discrimination—and I know that it’s out there, you know. I know there’s shit Omegas have to deal with. But the fact is that to be a SHIELD agent, you’ve got to make it through the training, same as anyone else. They can pull that affirmative action bullshit to get into college and get a job on Wall Street or whatever, but here—if you can’t shoot, you can’t shoot. And Omegas just _can’t_.” 

“I might know one or two that can,” Steve says mildly. 

“Well, send ‘em on over,” Agent Robinson replies, and when Steve looks over she’s wearing a bra again, and is pulling her hair up into a ponytail. “I’m happy to be proven wrong.” 

Now, wouldn’t that be funny? 

  
  


Nobody here knows it, but it’s Steve’s birthday today. He’s twenty-seven, or ninety-four, depending on your perspective, and it’s been about four months since he woke up in 2012. He spends most of the day battling another, smaller alien invasion in Tasmania. It’s not the worst birthday he’s ever had. 

It’s improved, marginally, when on the trip home Tony spends at least thirty minutes attempting to explain the International Date Line to Thor. 

“—because we divide the Earth into segments, twenty-four of them, one for each hour it takes for the Earth to make a full rotation, so at some point, the day changes. And they decided, I don’t know, hundreds of years ago, that the day would start at this specific line.” 

“But there is no _actual line?_ ” Thor asks again. 

“It’s a—it’s a _metaphorical_ line,” Tony sighs. 

“Like a poem!” 

Tony stares at Thor. “ _Not_ like a poem.” 

Steve catches a flicker of mirth across Thor’s face, when Tony plants his head on the desk at one point, which tells him that Thor isn’t nearly as dumb as he’s pretending to be. This is a particular kind of entertainment that Steve could get behind. 

Later still, because even a quinjet takes several hours to travel from Tasmania to New York, Steve is drawn out of his mission report just in time to hear Thor drop this particular little bomb: 

“In Asgard,” he’s saying to Clint and Natasha (the latter of whom is pretending not to pay attention), “we have only two genders: the male, and the female. None of these others that you humans have, and none of the _import_ that you place upon them. A gender is just—” Thor waves a hand. “—a physical form.” 

Steve lowers his tablet. 

Natasha’s cloth pauses over the barrel of her gun. 

“No shit,” Clint says easily. “So you’re really not an Alpha?” 

“I am not,” Thor confirms. 

“I mean, you never smelled like any secondary gender, but you’ve also got a magic hammer and you travel by rainbows, so I figured, you know. Aliens just smelled different.” 

“Jane has explained to me that smell is very important,” Thor agrees, nodding. “You humans have… pheromones. Like animals.” 

“Humans _are_ animals,” Natasha drawls, without looking up from her gun. 

“Man, that’s wild. So you don’t have heats, or ruts, or anything. You just…” 

“Have sex?” Natasha fills in. 

“Asgardians are _highly_ gifted lovers,” Thor informs them. 

“So, wait, you can’t smell it, then,” Clint continues, ignoring this. “You have no idea who’s an Alpha or a Beta among us unless we literally _tell you._ That’s so crazy. I mean, we have humans who can’t smell that, either, there’s like a million movies about it, but it’s actually a super rare genetic condition—”

“Do you know?” Natasha interrupts softly. “What we all are?” 

“Alpha,” Thor replies, pointing at her, looking pleased. “Beta,” he says, pointing at Clint, and then points at Steve. “Alpha. And Stark is an Omega.” 

“High five,” Clint says, leaning forward, and Thor returns it enthusiastically. 

  
  


Here is a very key fact that Steve has learned, since the Chitauri Invasion: 

He is _not_ transgender. 

But Bucky is dead, so quite frankly, who gives a shit? 

  
  


It’s been six months since Steve woke up in 2012, and he’s doing better. The gun sits in his nightstand instead of under his pillow, and sometimes instead of _not today_ he thinks _not this week_. He no longer has to stave off panic attacks multiple times in a day. Sometimes, Steve even goes to a real grocery store instead of just the corner bodega. 

Making this trip has been on his mind for the past three months, and Steve is still fairly certain that it’s not going to be… pleasant. But he has to do this now, or risk never being able to at all. 

The last time Steve had seen Becca Barnes, she’d had six inches and forty pounds on him. The woman who answers the door barely comes up to Steve’s chin. Her hair is white and short, her skin like crumpled tissue paper, her face set in heavy lines—but her eyes are the same gray-blue as her brother’s had been. 

Steve was not ready for this. 

He meant to greet her politely, but all the words have been sucked out of him. 

“I _fucking_ knew it,” Becca says, scowling. 

“Becca,” Steve says helplessly. 

“And of course you waited until Jack was gone to come and prove it,” Becca continues, shaking her head. “I _told_ him it was you. Sixty-five years, we argued about it, and here you are a year too late. We bet five bucks on it, you know. ‘Course, that was in 1945, you know, he’d owe me a hell of a lot more today with inflation—get inside, get inside. You’re letting all the cold air in, I’m delicate these days.” 

Steve follows her inside, heart in his throat. 

What had happened was this: 

He’s realized in his first month here that with modern medicine and technology, people lived well past their sixties nowadays, and that he actually _might_ still have some friends alive. SHIELD had allowed a minor abuse of their resources, and within a day Steve had files on hand for Peggy and Morita. Steve had opened the top file, and then shoved them into a bottom drawer, and proceeded to barely fend off another panic attack. 

He revisited them periodically, able to get through more and more each time, enough to learn that Peggy was in DC, and Morita was in Sacramento. 

It took _much_ longer for him to get to the public library far from SHIELD’s prying eyes and do his own research on the in-laws that no one knew Captain America had ever had. It had taken every last bit of courage, and every last ounce of skill he had with modern technology, but he’d eventually found an obituary for Jack Taylor, who passed away in Williamsburg last year and was outlived by his long-time partner, Rebecca Barnes. 

And that was when it had really hit him that while people lived long lives these days, they weren’t actually immortal. 

He’d missed Jack by nine months. He couldn’t miss Becca. He _couldn’t_. 

Becca’s house is a narrow two-story rowhouse, and while the exterior is a bit shabby compared to its neighbors, the inside is clean and if not wholly modern, then well-loved, at least. Pictures are everywhere, and as Steve walks past he sees mostly Becca and Jack, but also Grace, and Alice, and—God, is that _Earnest?_

“Sit,” Becca instructs, pointing at an overstuffed sofa covered in blankets. 

Steve sits. He reaches out to help Becca with her cane as she shuffles around to sit next to him, and gets whacked across the shins for his trouble. 

“Ow,” he complains. 

“Shush,” Becca replies, and settles down next to him. She angles herself inward, facing him, and Steve mirrors the position. “Jesus fuck, you got big.” 

Snakes squirm in his belly, and his heart starts to race, and Steve has to stop himself from instinctively folding inward. “I know,” he says quietly. 

“Oh, come on,” Becca says, and her hand on his arm is almost weightless. “You’re still pretty as a picture, don’t you worry. Better’n me, at any rate.” 

“You look gorgeous,” Steve says immediately. 

Becca rolls her eyes. “Oh, shut the fuck up.” 

“You didn’t use to swear this much,” Steve observes. 

“Well, I also used to wear a lot of dresses, and pretend that I thought Omegas were appealing,” Becca replies, with a wicked grin. 

“Right. Uh. I read, uh. That you and Jack were—” The obituary had _said_ ‘long-time partner’, but he’s still not quite able to wrap his head around it. “Even back then, when you moved in together as roommates—” 

Becca laughs. “Oh, _yes_. We were ‘roommates’ well into the eighties. It wasn’t until just recently that it was acceptable even in the most liberal of circles, for two Alphas to be together like that. We had some… well, some difficult times. There are a lot of small-minded people out there. But I loved him, with all my heart, and I won’t apologize for it.” 

Steve tries to think of what he would have done in 1943, if he’d found out that Becca and Jack had been more than friends. _Lovers_. 

He remembers, with sudden shame, all the jokes he and Bucky used to make about Susan Sanders and Jacob Edelstein. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, looking her in the eye, now. “For—for whatever I did or said, back then, about qu—um. Homosexuals. You shouldn’t have had to hear that from me. Or from anyone, but especially me.” 

Becca smiles, slowly. “Oh, Steve,” she says, squeezing his arm tight. “I hardly remember any of that shit.” 

“It was _wrong_ ,” Steve insists. “I never even stopped to ask what would be so bad about two Alphas, or two Omegas, I just—made jokes and said awful things, and—” 

“Yeah, you, and the entire _rest of the world_ , Steve,” Becca says, exasperated. “How were you supposed to know better?” 

“All that time I spent talking about Omega rights, and women’s rights, and I never thought for a minute—” 

“Oh, shut up. Do you know what _I_ remember? A few years before the war, you an’ Bucky were over for Sunday dinner, and they’d just done that big raid on that queer bar over on—shit, I don’t remember where. But it was in the papers, all these people they arrested. And you got into a huge, screaming fight with Dad about it.” 

Steve vaguely remembers that night. He hadn’t seen why the queers couldn’t just be left alone to mind their own business, but George Barnes had said it was a bad influence on the neighborhood, and Steve—who had grown up Irish, Catholic, disabled, and in and out of shanty towns—had had a lot of _thoughts_ about what bad influences on a neighborhood were. 

“Still,” Steve says, “just because I didn’t think they should have been beaten to death in the streets, doesn’t excuse the things I said back then. I’ve—this century has taught me a lot.” 

Becca rolls her eyes. “It’s old news, Steve.”

“But I still—” 

“ _Steve_ ,” Becca barks. 

“ _Becca_.” 

“Good Christ. It’s good to know the Army didn’t beat the stubborn out of you,” Becca sighs, and Steve has to laugh at that. 

It isn’t long, though, before Becca gets around to asking the question she really deserves to have answered. 

“Steve,” she says, and at this point, Steve’s hand has somehow made its way onto her lap, and both of her small, frail hands are wrapped around it. “You know, back in forty-three, you just went missing that August. Last time we saw you was that night, playing cards, and then you were _gone_.” She pauses, and Steve sees in her eyes a seventy-year-old hurt that hasn’t eased. “What happened to you?” 

So he tells her, as much as he can. It’s treason, technically, but Becca is ninety-two years old and more than that, she’s _family_. She deserves to know, after all this time. 

Haltingly, he tells her about Erskine, and the lab, and the assassination attempt, and then about Peggy and Howard, and Senator Brandt. He tells her about the USO Tour, and going to Europe, and he’s doing really well with it until he gets to his stop in Italy, and Steve—

“—and I knew that the 107th was where B—” 

Steve swallows and tries again. 

“I knew that he was there, that—” 

He curls his hands into fists. 

“That it was _B_ —” 

He chokes, chest seizing, and his throat is hot and tight, his heart is pounding in his ears, and he _can’t say his name_. 

“Steve,” Becca says, gentle, like she never was when she was young. Something she’s learned without him. “It’s okay.” 

Steve clenches his jaw, fighting against the heave in his chest, the tremor in his hands. It’s a familiar battle. _One, two, three, four, five, six, seven_. This will not break him. Not now. 

“Steve,” Becca says, and there’s a featherweight on his shoulder. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve grits out, as he wrestles himself under control. He opens his eyes, and unclenches his hands. The ache in Becca’s face threatens to send him spiraling again, but Steve regulates his breathing and pushes through it. 

Becca deserves better than this. 

“I’m sorry,” he says again. 

“I know the rest,” she tells him, squeezing his shoulder. “Or enough of it, anyhow. You went and got ‘im, and then you and your little troupe went all over Europe, winnin’ half the war on your own.” 

“Not— _half the war_.” 

“You didn’t stick around for the post-mortem analysis of World War II, Steve. Believe me, there’s a reason they gave you so many goddamn medals after you died.” 

“Propaganda,” Steve says. 

“That whole damn war was fought on propaganda, and you were hardly the worst of it.” 

Steve has seen the protests, the comments online. He doesn’t go looking for them, exactly, but his initial return to the public spotlight had been met with a number of anti-war demonstrations, people convinced that he was a government edifice, constructed to revitalize a country left bitterly unpatriotic after a disastrous occupation of Iraq and multiple economic crashes. 

Or so Steve has read. 

Once or twice. 

“I didn’t realize what happened until the war was almost over,” Becca says, drawing Steve’s attention back. “We looked for you for months, after you went missing—the whole family did. We put up papers, went to the police, everything, but—maybe there were government people covering things up and takin’ evidence, or maybe just no one gave a shit about some Omega from Brooklyn, but we had nothing.” 

Guilt rises up in Steve, the same as he’d felt in 1943. “Becca—” 

“I couldn’t bring myself to write Bucky and tell him,” Becca continues, ignoring him. “I knew for sure that if I told him you were dead—well. I knew he wouldn’t be comin’ back to us, one way or another. Of course, I see the irony of that now, but at the time it seemed like the best thing to do.” 

Steve can’t imagine what that must have been like. Bucky at war, and himself missing, probably dead. And Becca, alone and confused. 

“We didn’t find out that Bucky had died until almost May. You were listed as his next of kin, see, so the notice went to your old apartment. It was only after we hadn’t heard from him for so long that Alice wrote in to ask, and eventually it came out that he’d died back in March.” 

She speaks about Bucky’s death so casually that Steve reels a little bit with it. 

_It’s been almost seventy years for her_ , he reminds himself. 

Wonders if in seventy years, he won’t feel like half his soul has been ripped out of him, just hearing the name. It doesn’t seem possible. 

“And it was only after you’d died that _your_ name really came out, you know,” Becca continues. Her eyes are so much like Bucky’s. “Before then it was _Captain America this_ and _Captain America that_. But after we won the war and they decided to slap you with a dozen medals and build you that whole memorial down in Arlington, that’s when the _Steven G. Rogers_ came out. And then I started really reading, checking timelines, looking at pictures—not many of you without that helmet, but I found ‘em. And after I realized that you’d gone down into the ice only a week after Bucky died—well.” She folds her hands together in her lap, and looks at him. “Well. Then I just knew.” 

“Becca,” Steve says. He opens his mouth, but no other words come to mind, so he says it again, raw with grief. “ _Becca_.” 

“It’s all right. I’ve had nearly seventy years to make peace with it. And seventy years of Jack calling me a paranoid old crackpot, which is what you should _really_ apologize for, if you ask me.” 

“I’m sorry,” Steve says immediately. 

Becca looks up at the ceiling. “You hear that, Jack?” 

Steve feels the smile tugging on the corners of his mouth, despite himself. 

Becca settles back into the couch with a harrumph, and looks over to Steve again. 

"Becca," Steve says tentatively. 

"Steven." 

"What did I miss?" 

"Honestly, not much. You slept through a hell of a lot of bullshit. Vietnam, Regan, AIDS. The 9 train." 

"No, not—the world," Steve says, shaking his head. "Tell me about you and Jack. Alice. Your parents. All of it, everything I missed. Please.” 

Becca looks impossibly old as she gazes at him. He’d told her before that she was still beautiful, and she is, but there’s a small and terrible part of Steve that viciously wants her to be young again. 

Not to be beautiful, but because the ache of having something so familiar and yet so _wrong_ at the same time is nearly overpowering. He wants _his_ Becca. He wants Jack, and he wants their third-floor walkup in Vinegar Hill, and the table with the wonky leg and the tin cups and chipped china and his own body, small and sickly though it had been, because it was a body that had never known what it was to be alone. It was a body that had been _loved_. 

But he can’t have that. 

Instead, he has himself, overgrown and out of time, and Becca, wrinkled and brittle-boned and not quite able to hide the tremor in her hands when she reaches out, again and again. 

“That’s gonna take more than one afternoon,” Becca warns him. 

“Guess I’ll have to keep coming back, then,” Steve says, pulling the corners of his mouth into a ghost of a real smile. 

“Well,” Becca says, and she huffs and reaches for her cane. “Better get the pictures out, then.” 

“I’ll get them,” Steve says, springing to his feet immediately. “Just tell me where the albums are, you sit down.” 

“Albums?” Becca repeats. 

“Photo albums,” Steve says. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Steve,” Becca scoffs. “I digitized them years ago, I’m getting my laptop.” 

“Oh.” 

Becca rolls her eyes, and pushes herself carefully to her feet. “Honestly. You’re only _chronologically_ ninety-four years old, Steve. Get with the goddamn times.” 

  
  


After he visits Becca, because he’s an open wound at this point anyway, Steve goes to Fort Greene Park. The neighborhood is full of high-rises and scaffolding now, but the park is largely unchanged save for a few more trees and less trash. Still standing tall in the middle is the great white monolith, the Martyr’s Monument. 

Steve stands at the topmost concrete step, just short of the platform it rests on. 

_“You think your stupid graffiti’s still there?”_ Bucky had wondered, a million years ago. 

In Steve’s hand is a gift from Becca: a photograph, printed from her Epsom SureColor Photo Printer 3700 with glossy HP Photo Paper, and carefully cut down to size with sewing shears. 

In the picture, Steve is eighteen and his suit doesn’t do anything to disguise how skinny he is, and the white collar around his neck only emphasizes it further. Standing a whole head taller than him is Bucky, his hair bullied into a Clark Gable style with too much Brilliantine, and surrounding them is the entire Barnes clan in their Sunday best; Becca’s standing tall in a dress that is slightly lumpy because she’d sewn it herself out of old flour sacks, and Alice has a cardigan on because her dress had been an unfashionable hand-me-down. If Steve squints hard enough, he can just see the fraying edges of Grace’s dress from where they’d had to let the hem out completely to make it cover her knees. To the left is Father McGinley, grinning with a cigarette in hand. 

Steve wants to dive into the photograph headfirst, and never come back out. 

  
  


“Just in here, sir,” the orderly says, gesturing, and swipes his ID badge. 

Steve mumbles his thanks, and pushes the door open. 

At two in the morning, Walter Reed is about as quiet as hospitals ever get, so Steve is surprised to walk into the lounge and see Tony Stark pouring himself a cup of coffee. 

They both pause, and stare at each other. 

Tony is in business clothes, but minus the jacket and with the tie halfway undone, and he looks tired but otherwise well. This is in contrast to Steve, who is still in uniform and is aware that he looks like he'd just crawled out from under a collapsed building. Probably because he had, in fact, recently crawled out from under a collapsed building. 

“Cap,” Tony says, nodding. “Welcome to the VIP lounge.” 

Steve looks around in confusion. “The—” 

“You think they let the peasants have access to a keurig?” Tony asks. 

“I just… asked for a place to sit down,” Steve says. 

“And you thought they were gonna put Captain America down in the cafeteria?” 

Steve shrugs. He sets the shield down in a corner, and starts toward the stack of mugs at the far end of the counter. 

“Did you just get discharged from the ER? Because if so—and I’m not an expert here, but—you should probably ask for your money back.” 

“One of my agents,” Steve says quietly. “She’s in surgery right now. Her mate is driving up from Virginia right now.” 

“Right. She gonna be okay?” 

Steve shrugs. “We'll see. What about you? You have someone here?” 

“No, I just come for the coffee.” 

Steve gives him a flat look. 

“Rhodey,” Tony admits. “Took a bit of a hit today. Yesterday. Whatever. He’s asleep, now, but doc’s gonna call once his latest results are back.” 

“Sorry to hear it,” Steve says. “He’s a tough guy, though, and he’s in good hands. I’m sure he’ll be all right.” 

Tony nods. 

For once, Tony’s quiet. He leaves Steve to the keurig—doesn’t even make a joke about Steve using modern technology—and settles onto the couch. Steve makes his coffee in silence, then comes over to the other end of the couch. They sit in companionable silence, drinking their coffee and clutching their cell phones, waiting together. 

  
  


It’s Christmas Eve, and Steve is flying over Kazakhstan with Natasha in a stolen executive jet—though, as Natasha had pointed out, can you really steal from the dead? They’ve got two hours to make it to Atyrau, where they’ll pick up a flight to Tbilisi, where SHIELD has a quinjet waiting for them. Steve had spent the first hour of their flight mostly unconscious. 

“Your hand-to-hand has improved,” Natasha says, without turning her gaze away from the horizon. 

“All evidence to the contrary,” Steve replies, as he gingerly pats at the sticky spot on the side of his head underneath the headphones. 

Natasha snorts. “No, but really,” she says, turning to look at him with an arched eyebrow. “Who’s been teaching you?” 

“Agent Robinson,” Steve says. 

“And before that?” Natasha asks. 

“You mean—” 

“Yeah.” 

“Mostly, I just figured things out on my own.” 

Natasha eyes him speculatively. “Back in March,” she says, eventually, “you fought like me.” 

“I wasn’t _nearly_ as good as you,” Steve replies. 

“No, not as good,” Natasha agrees. “But you fought _like_ me. Like someone small. You were highly evasive, you preferred close-range strikes, you attacked from below the center of gravity, and you turned it into a ground fight as quickly as possible.” 

That is _exactly_ how Natasha fights. 

“Agent Robinson’s been... really great,” Steve says lamely. 

“She taught you to fight according to your strengths,” Natasha says approvingly. “It’s much better.” 

“Thanks.” 

“We should spar, sometime.” 

Steve grins a little. “Let me finish regrowing my skull, first.” 

“You know, usually I make a guy buy me dinner before I let him show me his brain matter."

“The MRE last night didn’t count?” 

“Did you buy it?” 

“I cooked it.” 

“ _Terribly._ ” 

“It wasn’t that bad. The undercooked bits just added texture to the… uh.” 

“The overcooked bits?” 

“You know what, in 1935, that would have been a prime Sunday dinner.” 

“Oh, spare me, Rogers. Here, take control, I have to go use the bathroom. You want anything from the minibar?” 

“Wait, wha—I can’t _fly_ ,” Steve protests. 

Natasha pauses, headset half off, and frowns at him. “You flew planes in World War II.” 

“I flew _one_ plane, and then rather famously, I crashed it five minutes later.” 

She heaves out a sigh. “You are entirely false advertising. Okay. Pay attention, because I actually do have to pee.” 

  
  


Steve makes it home just in time to spend the latter half of Christmas Day with Becca. He expected her to have a quiet Christmas, with no children, Jack and Alice dead, and Grace off in Illinois—but instead, Steve is introduced to what must be every queer person over the age of eighty-five in Brooklyn. 

He’s only introduced as ‘Steve’, and everyone gamely pretends not to recognize him. 

Steve drinks a bit of schnapps, discovers that residual concussions apparently allow him to get something very similar to drunk, and then he drinks a _lot_ more schnapps. They play Apples to Apples, eat entirely too many empanadas, and a blue-haired Omega named Frankie spins Steve around the living room and tries to teach him the Lindy Hop. He passes out on Becca’s couch, and wakes up covered by a homemade quilt. 

“Don’t fall on the ice, old man,” Becca calls after him, when Steve tromps out into the snow the following morning, laden with tupperware. 

Steve flips her off, and hears her laughing even after he turns the corner. 

  
  


Steve may not have to do prop films or memorize dance routines in this century, but it has evils of its own: namely, press conferences. And unfortunately as the de facto leader of the Avengers, Steve ends up answering most of the questions, even if the entire team is up there on the stage as well. 

Today, they're fresh out of a battle against an AIM uprising in Philadelphia, which had left dozens dead, several blocks of the city in ruin, and an entire nation demanding to know why _another_ major city had not been properly defended.

These are the questions Steve is asked: 

"Were there any warning signs that this would happen?" 

"Is there any connection between what happened today and the events in New York this past spring?"

"Captain Rogers, do you feel that the Avengers handled this situation well? Given the number of casualties?" 

"What would you say to the people affected by this tragedy, and their families?" 

"How certain are you that the situation is actually under control now, Captain?"

"What steps do you plan to take to prevent this from happening again?"

"Can you comment on the absence of Iron Man, today?" 

Steve pauses, though he'd been warned to expect this question. "He was unfortunately unable to join us today, due to circumstances out of his control, but Stark Industries will be assisting in relief efforts for the foreseeable future," he replies.

"Would those circumstances happen to be his heat?" 

Steve fights against the reflexive burn of embarrassment that such a question is being asked on _national television_. 

"I'm not at liberty to discuss Mr. Stark’s health at this time," he says evenly. "Next question?" 

"Captain, how do you think the battle would have gone if you'd had Iron Man's assistance today?" 

Steve holds in a sigh. "Every battle is unpredictable. We can only ever do our best with the resources we're given, in the time that we have. That's true in any situation, but especially in a conflict like today's."

"Do you think the city of Philadelphia would have sustained this many casualties, had Mr. Stark been there?" 

"That’s impossible to say," Steve says, fighting against frustration. He summons the dregs of his patience from somewhere, and adds, "The loss of human lives today was a tragedy that will not go unexamined. As the mayor said earlier this evening, the events of today will be thoroughly investigated, and if there are any corrective actions to be taken, they will be implemented thoughtfully and effectively." 

"Do you think it's appropriate that an Avenger is allowed to be absent in a time of crisis, for something as trivial as a heat?" 

Steve grits his teeth. "Again. I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to comment on Mr. Stark’s reasons for not joining the team today. All I can tell you is that every Avenger is fully committed to the defense of the Earth, and would not be absent from any battle by choice." 

"What are your thoughts on Mr. Stark’s refusal to comply with mandatory heat suppressants for all Omegas in law enforcement or military positions?” 

“Mr. Stark is a private citizen, so I would remind everyone that he is not subject to those laws.” 

“But as a member of the Avengers—” 

“Next question,” Steve interrupts. 

“Captain Rogers, you don’t think it’s important to account for—” 

“I have accounted for his absence, as the leader of this team, and found it acceptable. There will be no further conversation on the matter, and there was never any need for it in the first place, other than an exercise in blatant sexism.” 

Immediately, a storm of protests erupts. 

_“Sexism?”_

“Captain, are you accusing—” 

“—valid question—” 

“—taking a more liberal position when—” 

“—refusal to answer—” 

“It’s entirely sexist,” Steve interrupts stonily. “You’ve all spent the last twenty minutes badgering me to reveal private medical information about Tony Stark because you want to expose him as some kind of inferior member of the team, but not one of you—not _one of you_ has pointed out that Thor was missing today as well.” 

There’s a deafening silence. 

“No?” Steve asks, looking around the silent room. “No one noticed that?” 

Low murmuring begins to circulate the room, but no one raises their hand to reply. 

“Well, that’s a shame.” 

A hand goes up in the back of the room, and from the look on the reporter’s face, it isn’t to apologize. 

“No more questions,” Steve announces, because he knows if this man opens his mouth, the evening news will be headlining Captain America swearing on national television, and he thinks he’s done enough damage for one night. “Thank you for your time. Be safe. Good night.”

Almost at once, they rise to their feet with a wave of objections, microphones out, questions spilling out all at once, but Steve ignores them and leaves the stage without a second glance. 

It’s maybe the first time he’s ever felt like _himself_ on a stage. 

And it felt _good_.

Three weeks later, Becca passes away in her sleep. 

Steve sits on his bed all night, holding that gun, and thinking, and thinking, and _thinking_. 

And in the morning, when he’s still alive, he puts in for a transfer to D.C. 


	6. 2014

Steve was a nurse long before he was Captain America, and they may not have known much in the forties, but they knew enough to clean an area with alcohol before giving an injection. He may have the immune system of a supersoldier on his side, but he still fastidiously wipes his thigh with the little alcohol pad before plunging the needle into the meatiest part, and then depressing the syringe. 

It burns, but only for a minute. 

He flicks the safety lock upward, and then deposits the syringe in the bathroom drawer to be safely thrown out later. He rubs the muscle of his thigh to ease the ache that’s quickly dissipating on its own, anyway. The two vials he’d drawn the medication out of are tossed into the garbage.

When Steve had first come out of the ice, he’d started taking injectable heat suppressants again, just like he had during the war—but after five months, he’d started to feel the telltale prickle of heat, and had had to take another dose a month early. At first, he’d thought that this new medication Fury had found for him just wasn’t as good as whatever Howard had concocted back in 1943, but after a few more doses, they began to only last four months. 

And that was when Steve had realized—the medications of the future weren’t the issue. He was becoming _resistant_. 

Currently, Steve gives himself a double-dose every three months, and it works for now. He tries not to think about what he’s going to do a few years from now. He’s also thankful that he doesn’t seem to have the same problem with the medication that replaces his pheromones—called _Pseuds_ , according to the transgender message boards that Steve has lurked on. 

He will also acknowledge that the side effects of these modern medicines are _much_ better than what Howard’s version had had. During the war, minor physical discomforts like constipation and headaches had been easy to dismiss when Steve was frequently nursing stab wounds and broken bones at the same time, but they were still unpleasant. He still gets headaches, the first few days after the injections, and bowel movements are sometimes a bit uncomfortable, but it’s a major improvement over the war, where every shit had felt like giving birth to a cactus. 

It’s been almost two years since he woke up in the future. Two years of covert dropboxes, and coded messages, and injections, and nightmares at the thought of an accidental heat. 

But the last few months, Steve has found himself wondering, _Why bother?_

But then he thinks about having to explain this to Fury. To the Avengers. He thinks about the public reaction, and all the people at SHIELD, the jokes they make in the locker room, the people who follow his orders but aren’t _his_ , not really. He thinks about every press conference Tony has ever held, and his carefully controlled expression when it’s inevitably asked, _And how do you think this will change, when you have a family one day?_

And at the end of the day, Steve is _Bucky’s_ Omega. And Bucky is gone. So what’s the point? 

  
  


Freshly dosed and wearing a long-sleeved shirt to cover the remaining bruises from his most recent mission, Steve goes to see Peggy. 

“Ah,” says Peggy, folding her hands in her lap and smirking. “The Star Spangled Man with an Anne.” 

Steve rolls his eyes. 

“I’ll be just ‘round the corner if you need anything,” Anne tells him, like always, and then ducks out of the room. 

“One day I’m going to visit when she’s not working, and you’ll have to come up with a new joke,” Steve says. 

“My night nurse is named Fran,” Peggy replies. 

“No, she isn’t.” 

“I have dementia, I can call her whatever I bloody like and she’ll just smile and nod so I don’t have an upset.” 

“You’re a menace,” Steve informs her, but the grin over his face probably belies that. He loves it when Peggy has good days like this. 

“I have to get my jollies where I can, these days. Bingo night is only once a week.” 

“Sorry I missed it again,” Steve says, genuinely. 

“Oh, I know, you were busy with your mission,” Peggy says, waving a hand. “Saving lives, battling evil. Jumping out of helicopters without a parachute for absolutely no reason.” 

Steve pauses. 

Peggy looks back at him innocently. “Oh. Did you think I wouldn’t hear?” 

_“How?_ ” 

“I have my ways. Steve, I _personally_ taught you how to put on a jumpsuit and use it to land safely. I may not have all my marbles, but I still have _that_ one.” 

Steve shrugs. “You know that I don’t really _need_ one.”

“But you’re not invincible,” Peggy reprimands. 

“Nearly,” Steve replies, petulant. 

Peggy sighs. “You _worry_ me, Steven.” 

“I’m fine,” Steve insists. At Peggy’s unimpressed look, he amends, “I’m better.” 

“You’d tell me, wouldn’t you? If you weren’t? Or—you’d tell _someone?_ ” 

And the thing is, Steve really _is_ better, these days. He has good days and bad days, and sure, sometimes he’ll be driving down the road and the thought will pop into his head, _If I veered right off that cliff, would it be enough?_ or they’ll be receiving training on the latest in chemical warfare and a voice will whisper, _Do you think it would really work?_ But his gun now lives in a safe in the closet, and Steve hasn’t had to pull it out in months.

He’s _better_. 

“Steve,” Peggy says. 

“I would,” Steve answers. “I would tell… someone.” At the look on her face, Steve tries to do better. “There’s a guy I—a friend of mine. He works for the VA. They’ve got some good people there.” 

Peggy softens. “Good. I’m glad. I don’t want you to be lonely.” 

“I’m not,” Steve promises. 

“And wear a bloody parachute next time.” 

“Yes, Ma.” 

“That’s ma’am to you, Captain.” 

Steve salutes her, just to see her smile again. 

  
  


‘Friend of mine’ is probably a bit of an exaggeration, given that Steve met Sam Wilson two days ago, but the guilt he feels over the lie is enough to actually drag him down to the VA after he’s done visiting Peggy. 

Sam Wilson graciously does not look surprised when he sees Steve, even though it had been pretty obvious the other day that Steve had been lying through his teeth about dropping by. 

“Good to see you, man,” Sam says, with a friendly smile. 

“You too,” Steve replies. “That, uh. That seemed like a pretty intense group you had there.” 

Sam’s smile turns rueful. “Unfortunately, a lot of us got a lot to work through when we come home. Lotta guilt. Lotta regret.” 

There’s something about the way he says it that Steve instinctively _knows_. 

“You lost someone,” Steve says. _States_. Because he knows it’s true, and it doesn’t make sense to him, that Sam has somehow lost his other half and yet he’s standing here with an easy smile on his face, like he’s not just functioning but _living_. 

“I did,” Sam agrees, peaceably. “My wingman, Riley.” And then he tells the story, like he’s told it a hundred times over, of how Riley died. Calm and simple. Like he’s made _peace_ with it. 

Steve can barely say Bucky’s name aloud, and it’s been two years.

Maybe Steve _should_ consider therapy. 

"And… you’re happy, now?” Steve asks, because he still can't wrap his head around it.

"Well," Sam says, after a moment’s thought, "the number of people giving me orders these days is about zero, so. Hell yeah. You thinking about getting out?" 

“No,” Steve says immediately. 

Sam looks at him. 

No, Steve is _not_ thinking about getting out. 

Leave SHIELD? 

Leave _Captain America?_

“No,” Steve repeats, more surely now. 

Sam nods slowly. “All right. Fair. If you love what you do, man, then keep right on doin’ it.” 

The words hit something sour in the pit of Steve’s stomach. _If you love what you do._

It’s a modern concept, the idea that you should grow up and find a job that you’re passionate about, not just the closest employer who can pay you a living wage. Steve certainly hadn’t _loved_ doing laundry for the neighborhood, or cleaning bedpans, or sorting test tubes for Erskine. But they had been willing to pay him, and especially as an Omega in the thirties, that had been no small thing. 

Being Captain America—not the USO Tour, but the _real_ Captain, who ran all over Europe with his band of men, trying to single-handedly turn the tide of World War II… well, he hadn’t had _fun_ , exactly. But it had been fulfilling. It had _meant_ something. 

His work at SHIELD these days… 

“I like what I do,” Steve declares. 

Sam raises an eyebrow. “You tellin’ me, or yourself?” 

“ _You_.” 

“Well, between the two of us, it doesn’t sound like I’m really the one you need to convince,” Sam points out. 

Steve prickles at that. Who is Sam to judge him? 

His work at SHIELD is important. It _means_ something, even if he can’t see it as clearly as he did back in the war. Sam doesn’t— 

Steve _likes_ being Captain America. 

Something of Steve’s growing irritation must show on his face, because Sam turns apologetic and puts his hands up in the air. 

“Hey, listen, I’m sorry,” he says readily. “I’m not your counselor, man, I know you didn’t come here for this. It just slips out sometime. You wanna grab lunch?” 

Steve feels his annoyance slowly dissipating in the wake of Sam’s natural friendliness, but he’s still left feeling prickled and tense. Half of him wants to go back to SHIELD and go a few rounds with a punching bag until it stops, and the other half just wants to be _alone_ , but— 

But he’d fucking promised Peggy. 

“Steve?” 

“Yeah,” Steve says instantly, refocusing on Sam, who looks concerned. “Sorry. Uh. Yeah, lunch. That’d be—let’s get lunch.” 

The words _Are you sure?_ are plain to see on Sam’s face, but he looks Steve up and down, and apparently finds an answer without having to ask. 

“Okay,” he says. “You up for gyros? I’ve been craving one all morning.” 

  
  


Twenty-four hours later, Steve has bigger fish to fry than his social life. Fury is dead, an entire tactical team tried to kill him in an elevator, SHIELD has declared him an enemy of the state, there’s some kind of ghost assassin skulking around D.C., and he and Natasha are narrowly arrested in the middle of a shopping mall, escaping only by an act of well-timed PDA. 

Natasha, though, apparently has different opinions about which fish they should be frying right now. 

“Was that your first kiss since 1945?” she asks. 

Steve turns to stare at her incredulously. 

Natasha is unrepentant. 

“So what if it was?” 

“It wasn’t half bad, for someone that out of practice.” 

_“Thanks.”_

Natasha smirks at him. 

Steve rolls his eyes, and turns his attention back to the road. 

But apparently the fish isn’t completely fried, because Natasha shifts in her seat and then says, “You had an Omega, back in the forties, didn’t you?” 

Steve grips the steering wheel so hard it starts to bend out of shape. 

“No,” he says. 

“Okay,” Natasha says readily. 

But nothing with her is that simple. She didn’t just _guess_. 

“How—” he starts to ask, but can’t finish. 

“The padlock on your dog tags,” Natasha says, and now she does look a little repentant. “I’m sorry. I… I notice things.” 

Fair. 

Steve wears his dog tags every single day, no matter the activity, and he works with an intelligence agency. Natasha is certainly not the only person who would have noticed that he wears something extra alongside the two standard tags. 

Steve also knows Natasha fairly well, at this point. He knows she hadn’t asked to be cruel. 

“My Ma was an Omega,” Steve says, before it occurs to him that he doesn’t remember if his fake history had ever given his parents secondary genders. He doesn’t think so. 

“So it’s her padlock?” Natasha asks. 

“When my dad left for war,” Steve continues, deliberately not answering her question, “World War I, I mean, he was a soldier—he left her with the collar on, and he took the key with him. It was… well, old-fashioned, even at the time. The idea that you had to lock up your property while you were off at war. Ma always said it was because he was a romantic, but looking back…” 

Steve glances over at her, and Natasha is watching him with rapt attention. He breathes in, and out, and continues on. 

“Anyway. He died about six months later. Mustard gas. And there was Ma, with this collar stuck around her neck.” 

“That must have been horrible for her,” Natasha murmurs. 

“It must’ve been,” he agrees. “Luckily, it was only leather, but she couldn’t bear to destroy it, anyway. She wore it for years.” 

And it had helped, the fiction that she still had an Alpha. Steve had been trained from a young age on the story of ‘waiting for Papa to come home from work’. He remembers how the leather—cheap and thin, the best a young Irish immigrant could afford in 1916—had rotted away, rubbing the delicate skin of her neck raw and red. 

“You loved her a lot,” Natasha comments. “To still wear her lock like that.” 

“It isn’t hers,” he says. 

His eyes are fixed on the road, and Natasha is silent. 

Steve grips the steering wheel, hard but not too hard this time, and adds, “She sold it when I was six.” 

December of 1924. Steve had been sick, _again_. 

He waits for her to ask. Anyone would. Steve doesn’t know whether he’s going to give her a truth or a lie, but his heart is pounding with anticipation of the question. 

_Whose lock_ is _it?_

But Natasha is quiet. 

When Steve looks over, she’s slumped back in her seat, face turned toward the window. She doesn’t ask anything at all.

  
  


In New Jersey, Steve and Natasha learn that SHIELD is not just a victim of poor communication and internal power struggles, but that HYDRA has become its very skeleton, its _backbone_. It’s rotten from the inside out. Everything Steve has done since being woken up in 2012 has been in service of the enemy. All the missions he led, all the people he killed, all the people he _trusted_ —

He and Natasha crawl out from the ruins of the bombed-out Army base and steal away into the night. 

In the dark of their stolen car, parked at an abandoned gas station in South Jersey, Steve creates a pressure dressing for the gash on Nat’s leg that won’t stop bleeding. 

“I could be HYDRA, too,” she says quietly. The first real thing she’s said since the missile hit Camp Lehigh. 

“But you aren’t,” Steve replies, wrapping the strips of his shirt around her leg with carefully even tension. 

“I could be. You know what I’ve done. You know what I _am_.” 

“I know _who you are_.” 

Natasha exhales. “You ever get tired of being so goddamn stubborn?”

“Believe it or not, that actually came _before_ the serum.” 

She snorts, and says nothing for a while as he finishes winding the last of this particular strip of makeshift gauze and then tying it off. He picks up the last strip of his t-shirt and judges where to start, to maximize his coverage. 

“You’re doing well,” Natasha comments. 

“I’ve had some practice with first aid in the field,” Steve replies. 

“Not what I meant.” 

Steve starts from the top end of the gash, and starts to wrap. 

“When I came out of the ice,” he says, careful, utterly focused on his task, “I was… in a bad place. SHIELD gave me purpose. It let me be Captain America again. I told myself it was because Fury needed me—because my _country_ needed me, but it wasn’t anything compared to the way I needed to be Captain America.” He wraps over the widest part of her calf, and then starts to move back up. “I didn’t ask questions. I just showed up, ready to shoot.” 

“You couldn’t have known, Steve.” 

“How does _Captain America_ miss the fact that he’s working for HYDRA?” 

“The same way Black Widow does, I guess.” 

But it’s different. Steve knows that Natasha did not enter SHIELD blindly. He knows that she did her research, that her choice of agency was _deliberate_. She thought that every op she took was not just another step toward redemption, but a step in a better direction for the world. 

Meanwhile, Steve has spent the last two years clawing his way back from the brink of suicide. SHIELD had given him structure in a world that was vast and unknowable, and Steve had been happy to be a weapon in exchange. He hadn’t needed any further justification for his targets other than _they’re the bad guys._

Ready, aim, fire. 

How many good men had died, because Steve hadn’t been able to look past the barrel of his own gun? 

  
  


The Winter Soldier fights with a skill that rivals Natasha’s, but with a strength that matches Steve’s, and he moves like he’s somehow fought Steve a hundred times before, while Steve is left guessing at every turn. Every trick Steve tries is immediately matched in kind. He’s barely holding his own. 

He’s _never_ been this closely matched before. 

Losing the shield ends up being an almost fatal flaw, when the Soldier launches it into the back of a van and Steve has nothing but his own body to counteract the might of that metal arm. The hits are bone breaking. His face comes inches away from the glint of a knife blade more times than he can count, until he finally manages to bring the fight back to the van and grabs the shield again. 

His first priority is to get rid of the Soldier’s knife, which takes two hits, and then he ducks under the swing of the metal arm and _rams_ the shield into its base, right at the shoulder. The Soldier jerks, grunts, and it takes only a swing and a flip to send the Soldier flying to the ground. 

But it’s not the Soldier who gets back up. 

It’s Bucky. 

That’s his face. That’s his hair, those are his eyes, and now that the face is there Steve wonders how he didn’t recognize the lines of his body to begin with. 

How is he alive? 

How is he _here?_

“Bucky,” Steve says, helplessly. 

“Who the hell is Bucky?” Bucky asks—

And that’s when Steve sees the glint of the metal arm, and the tac vest, and the destruction of downtown DC around them. 

This is Bucky, but it isn’t. 

His Alpha is alive, but he isn’t. 

Bucky raises his gun, directly at Steve, and in that heartbeat it all makes no sense and the only thing Steve can think is _okay_. 

But then Sam comes swooping in, and the shot is never fired. SHIELD arrives, Bucky is gone, and Steve, Sam and Natasha are all under arrest. 

  
  


Steve connects the dots, later, to that lab he’d found Bucky in back in 1943. The experiments in code he’d found in Zola’s notebook, with _32557038_ listed again and again. The way Bucky had stayed up with him all those nights, but had never seemed tired during the day. The way his injuries had healed just a little too fast, the shots that no other human could have made, the— 

The scream as he’d fallen into that ravine, and the HYDRA base that had only been miles away. 

_Two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years_ , Natasha had said. 

This, at least, explains why HYDRA had never even tried to get Steve on their side, these last two years. They already _had_ a supersoldier. 

  
  


“Who was he?” Natasha asks him. 

Steve can’t answer. There are no words for what Bucky was. _Is_. 

She presses two fingers to his chest, right where the padlock is. Where his heart is. “Was this his?” 

“It was all his,” Steve whispers. 

  
  


Two of the helicarriers are disabled, Sam is grounded, and all that’s standing between Steve and disabling the last helicarrier is Bucky Barnes. He’s positioned on the bridge, pale and starved, and his eyes hold nothing but ice. Steve’s entire being rebels at the idea of fighting him, of _hurting_ him. 

But millions of lives are on the line. 

Steve isn’t the kind of person who can compartmentalize like Natasha or Fury. He can’t pretend that he isn’t in a death battle with his own mate, that when his fist hits flesh it isn’t the flesh of the man he _loves_. But if Steve Rogers has learned how to do anything in his life, it’s to fight through the pain and keep right on swinging. 

So he does. 

Seventy-seven years ago, Bucky had taught him that when an Alpha would grab him by the arm, Steve had to turn the momentum around to twist the Alpha’s arm, and the Alpha would either have to let go or risk a broken arm. Steve remembers running it over and over again in their empty living room, back before they could afford more furniture than a bed and a table. He remembers Bucky’s hands on his, so big, but so gentle, so careful. 

Here on the helicarrier, Bucky grabs his arm, and Steve swings the momentum around, pins him in place, and breaks his arm so brutally he can hear the snap of the bones. 

Bucky’s howl of pain is like a knife to the ribs. 

But he’s not out, yet. They go to the ground, and after a scramble of limbs Steve manages to get Bucky into a chokehold. He can feel Bucky try to duck his chin down, feels him move to the side and feels the metal hand move back— 

_“Swing back and get ‘em right in the groin, Stevie, hard as you can.”_

_“What if it’s a dame, huh?”_

_“Still hurts. Then bring your elbow up like—yeah—right to the kisser. That’ll show ‘em.”_

But Steve catches the metal hand with his leg before it can swing back and hit his groin, and he pins it in place with a careful roll of his ankle. He brings his wrists together and _squeezes_ as hard as he can. 

Bucky’s hair is in his face. His scent is everywhere. Steve can feel the heat of his body against his, his heaving chest, the cartilage of his throat working desperately against the meat of his arm. The desperate grunting, in his last few moments of consciousness. 

It’s utterly, viscerally _wrong_ , and yet Steve doesn’t let go. 

When Bucky’s body goes limp against his, Steve shoves him off as fast as he can, grabs the chip from Bucky’s slack grasp, and races back to the control column. 

He’ll get this chip in place, save the world, and then— 

Then. 

Then maybe this can be over. 

Steve is halfway up the column when his left thigh explodes in pain, and he looks back to see Bucky standing below him, gun raised, unwavering. 

A leg shot, though. 

A disabling shot, but not a kill shot, certainly not for Steve. 

Steve swings himself up and keeps going. He gets hit again in the shoulder, and he thinks _he’s trying to disable, that’s all_ , and he keeps going all the way up to the central column. He fumbles for the chip in his belt, breathing through the pain, Hill’s countdown in his ear, and he goes to slot the chip in— 

He’s shot, right through the back. 

Steve goes down hard. 

Something was hit. Something very, _very_ bad. He can tell, even through the haze of pain, that the serum isn’t going to be able to fix this. He can’t breathe. He can’t move. His vision is going in and out, and he only hears Hill’s voice in his ear like distant static through a radio. 

There was a reason Steve usually put Bucky on higher ground with a long-range rifle rather than joining the rest of the Commandos in close combat. He’s always been a better shooter than a fighter. 

The shot is fatal. 

But not _yet_. 

He grits his teeth and tips himself forward, locks his elbows and catches himself on all fours. He grunts in pain and makes his back straighten, drags himself upward and props himself up against the column, just high enough that he can reach forward—his vision is going in and out—his ears ring—and he pushes the chip into place. 

“Charlie lock,” he gasps, and collapses to the ground. 

“Okay, Cap. Get out of there,” Hill orders. 

Steve pants through the pain, and forces the world to come into view around him. The city of D.C. looms ahead through the glass wall. They’re still above SHIELD property. If the helicarriers go down now, then they’ll only be taking out their own creators. 

And Steve wasn’t going to come back from this mission anyway. 

“Fire now,” he orders. 

“But Steve—” 

“Do it!” 

And she does, God bless her. 

The explosions are deafening. Each blast rocks Steve to his core, makes his ears ring and his vision swim, and watching the helicarrier fall to pieces around him barely looks real. He remembers aiming the Valkyrie at the iceberg, in 1945, and thinking that he’d rather burn than drown. 

What’s going to kill him first? The gunshot, or the helicarrier? 

Down below the grating, Steve sees Bucky, pinned to the floor by an enormous steel strut. He’s twisting and groaning. He looks terrified. 

So Steve goes to him. 

How could he not? 

He falls with intention more than he actually climbs down. The sight of Bucky in pain has given him something of a second wind, and something that has been long dead in him has reawoken. A base instinct, a primal need, a vitality in his blood he’s been living a half-life without. 

He has to help Bucky. He has to get him free. 

By the time Steve lands on the glass floor of the helicarrier, his comm has fallen out, but he doesn’t care. Let the last recorded words of Captain America be his order to Hill to fire with him still on board. 

It’ll look good in the history books. 

It takes probably all Steve has left in him to lift that beam up, just enough for Bucky to wriggle free. He half expects to be shot dead as soon as Bucky rolls out from under it, but when Steve manages to open his eyes again, Bucky is at eye-level, staring at him in confusion. He’s holding his arm close to his chest. The one Steve had broken. 

“Bucky,” he says, hope trickling in despite everything. “You know me.” 

For a second, Steve thinks he’s done it. 

He’s found his Alpha again. 

But then Bucky’s face hardens, and the enraged “No I _don’t!_ ” comes as barely enough warning for Steve to get his shield up and block the hit from the metal arm. 

It sends him sprawling. 

Why had he even raised the shield in the first place? 

“Bucky,” he tries again, searching for conflict on his face and finding only a trace of the confusion from before. “Bucky, you’ve known me your whole life. You married me. You were my—” 

This time, when the hit comes, Steve takes it. 

“Your name—is James Buchanan Barnes,” he tries, though it’s getting harder to talk. Bucky’s face moves in and out of focus, like someone adjusting a projector. 

He doesn’t even see the arm coming this time. 

Steve rips the cowl off of his head. Lets his shield fall to the river below. 

He hasn’t been Captain America in a long time, anyway. 

Not really. 

“I’m not gonna fight you,” he tells Bucky, who stares at him with wide, angry eyes. “I love you. I’m yours. Always have been.” 

_“Shut up!”_

This time, Bucky comes flying at him and tackles him to the floor. The hits come hard and fast to Steve’s face, each one like a bomb in his brain, and Bucky is screaming something but Steve can’t hear it. 

Twenty-five years of fighting against his own body just to stay alive. Two years in Europe, charging into battle and scraping by with his life barely intact. Ten minutes on an airplane, flying it into the Arctic Ocean and drowning to death, only to wake up and spend two years battling against his own grief. 

And this is how he dies. 

At Bucky’s hands. 

“I love you,” Steve manages, when the blows cease for a minute. 

He forces one eye open; the other one refuses to cooperate. He thinks his skull is fractured. 

Bucky is crouched above him, staring down at him in confusion. Horror. 

For the first time, those gray-blue eyes look like the ones Steve fell in love with, eighty years ago. 

“Hey,” Steve says, and he tries to smile but he doesn’t think it works. “I missed you.” 

The world swims for a moment, and Steve can’t see Bucky anymore, but he can feel the weight of his body, can smell him even through the smoke and ash. Then something else gives way, the world tilts, and Steve is— 

Falling. 

_Finally,_ he thinks, and then he doesn’t think anything at all. 

  
  


Steve wakes up, and isn’t dead. 

Again. 

This is really becoming something of a habit. 

  
  


Steve doesn’t have much sense of time, at first. One of his nurses tells him, as she’s hanging a bag on his IV pole, that he’s on enough pain meds to kill an elephant, and more than once Steve has heard the words ‘subdural hematoma’, which he eventually understands to be the fancy way of saying ‘brain bleed’. Sometimes Sam or Natasha are there, and sometimes they aren’t. 

One morning—Steve thinks it’s morning, because the last few times he was awake there was no light behind the window blinds, and now there is—one of the doctors is doing their regular physical exam, and at the end, she asks him how he’s feeling. 

“Better,” Steve rasps. 

She nods, and slings her stethoscope around her neck. “You look better. You’re getting one more CT today to check on the hematoma, but it’s still stable, neurosurg said no more imaging. The pneumonitis is resolving but we’re still going to keep you on the vanc and zosyn, especially with the bowel perf. Staples should come out later today, but wound care will be by. You can have ice chips today. Ortho and PT are coming later today. Your morning labs aren’t back yet, but your BUN/creatinine were improving last night, and your crit was finally stabilizing. We’ll be switching to PO pain meds today. Any questions?” 

Steve blinks at her. 

“No?” he eventually manages. 

She nods, scribbles something down on a notepad, and then tucks it away. She pumps sanitizer into her hand, starts rubbing it into her hands, and then exhales and steps back to his bedside. 

“You know, Mr. Rogers,” she says, and folds her arms over her chest. “When you first came in to us, as a trauma patient, you had full-body imaging as part of our protocol.” 

Steve nods slowly. His head is starting to really pound, and he wants to go back to sleep before the next person comes in, but he tries to focus. 

“You have some extra organs in your pelvis,” the doctor says flatly. “I’d ask if you were aware, but I’m pretty sure you are.” 

It takes Steve a moment. 

“Oh,” he says eventually, and coughs. 

“I understand that those kind of _things_ are private, but there was absolutely no medical record of it anywhere, not even when we obtained your prior records. Do you understand how dangerous it can be to lie to your doctor about something like that?” 

Maybe it’s the drugs, or the shock, but Steve can only stare up at her in confusion. 

“How are we supposed to help you if we’re not working with all the information, Mr. Rogers? If we don’t know all the medications you take? You come in here smelling like an Alpha when you’re not, and I could overdose you on heparin. I could mistake polycythemia caused by _your_ medications for over-transfusion and not give you the blood you need. These are serious consequences.” 

Even through all the drugs, Steve can feel himself starting to get angry, even as he struggles to string together _why_. 

He hadn’t lied. 

Okay, he had. Two years ago, he’d lied. Did it still count? 

If a doctor had asked him, three weeks ago, what his biological gender was— 

And whose fault was it anyway, that Steve had been forced into this lie? 

(His own.) 

But the entire world around him, that wouldn’t have accepted an Omega as Captain America. Fury, who pulled him out of the ice and sent him back into battle before he could understand what this new century was really like. Bucky, for dying and leaving him alone. Goddamn Tony Stark, for— 

“I’ve had admitting update your records,” the doctor tells him stiffly, “so we won’t have this problem in the future. Have a good day.” 

And then she leaves. 

Steve, with an effort that has raised cars up off the ground before, turns his head and lifts his wrist so he can see the bracelet there. It’s facing the wrong way, so he rubs his wrist against the sheet over and over until it spins the right way around. 

ROGERS, STEVEN MR# 000198546  
DOB 07/04/1918 95 M/O  
DOS 06/17/2014  
DR EVANS, RAEGAN

The energy it takes to focus his eyes long enough to read through the whole thing leaves him exhausted, and he remembers his head falling back and closing his eyes, just for a minute, and then the next time he wakes up, a nurse is pushing a computer on wheels into his room and asking what his pain score is this morning. 

  
  


The more lucid Steve becomes, the more he thinks about it, and the more he thinks about it, the angrier he gets. 

He’s angry at that doctor, who had treated him like a criminal rather than a patient, and furious to think about the damage it would have caused—no doubt _has_ caused—to people who are actually transgendered. To people more vulnerable than him, without his wealth and his privilege. How _dare_ she abuse her power like that. 

He’s angry at SHIELD, for betraying him, for _using_ him, and at Fury for not being the omnipotent director he’d promised to be, and all the people above him who had turned blind eyes or actively _worked for HYDRA_. He’s angry at HYDRA for—God, for the war, for SHIELD, for taking Bucky Barnes and remaking him into a monster. He’s angry at America, for needing him. He’s angry with the _world_. 

But most of all, more than _anything_... he’s angry with himself. 

He can blame the people around him all day long, but in the end, Steve had volunteered to be Captain America. He’d agreed to pretend to be an Alpha, and he’d been the one who insisted on leaving the USO Tour to join the war, and _he’d_ been the one who led the mission that ended in Bucky falling. 

Maybe if Steve had been able to pull his head from his ass for more than five minutes back in 1945, he could have found Bucky in that ravine. He could have _saved_ him. They could have gone home to Brooklyn, back to their family, and grown old together. Died together. 

And when Steve had woken up in 2012, sure, Fury had shuffled him right off to battle, but Steve hadn’t questioned him, not once, and furthermore it had been _Steve’s_ brilliant idea let him believe he was transgendered. To keep up the facade of being an Alpha, even after it became apparent that 2012 was very different from 1945. He’s been coasting on an Alpha’s privilege for over two years, now. He’s been lazy. He’s been a fucking _coward_. 

And, God. Maybe if he’d managed to look past his own grief for five fucking minutes, he’d have noticed that SHIELD was HYDRA before it led to an all-out battle in D.C. Maybe he wouldn’t have the blood of so many innocent people on his hands. Maybe he’d have noticed that his _mate_ was still alive, and running around the globe as a _brainwashed assassin_. 

Steve is counting the days until he’s discharge. 

He has work to do. 

  
  


Sam is working his way through his third pudding cup—he’d had one vanilla, one chocolate, and then claimed the chocolate had been so bad he needed another vanilla to get rid of the taste—when he says, “So—and feel free to tell me to shut up at any point—your buddy was in that data dump.” 

Steve, who is still only allowed a clear liquid diet on account of the holes in his intestines, puts down his spoonful of broth. 

“I did some reading—I mean, you know. Wikipedia. Nothing crazy. But Barnes was your friend in the war, wasn’t he?” 

Steve nods. 

That _is_ what Wikipedia says. It’s what the history books say, too. 

“Best friend?” Sam asks. 

“Yeah,” Steve answers. 

Sam nods, scraping his spoon around the vanilla edges of the cup. “Pretty good friend, to go through all that for him.” 

“He was,” Steve agrees tightly. 

_Pretty good friends_ , indeed. 

“You know,” Sam says slowly, “and I repeat, again, feel free to tell me to shut up at any time. But. _If_ hypothetically, you and Barnes were maybe… more than friends. I know two Alphas, it wasn’t cool back then. But. You know, today. That’s… That it’s okay?” 

“We weren’t _gay lovers_ , Sam,” Steve says tersely. 

Sam puts up his hands, the spoon in one and the pudding cup in the other. “No problem.” 

"Bucky was—” 

Steve stops, and then his anger surges again and his resolve comes with it. 

This is where it starts. 

“Bucky was my Alpha,” he says. “Because I was his Omega.” 

Sam stares. 

“I was born an Omega,” Steve says, the tide unleashed now. “I’ve always _been_ an Omega. But in 1943, the world wasn’t ready for an Omega to be Captain America, so Howard Stark made me smell like an Alpha, and the US government got rid of Steve Rogers the Omega.” It feels good to say. It feels _really_ good. “I was born on August 8th, in Brooklyn, and I don’t have a middle name, and I’m Catholic, and Bucky and I have been mated since 1937 and _I love him_.” 

“Okay,” Sam says, after a pause. He sets down his pudding cup. “Uh. Wow.” 

“In a few weeks, the Pseuds are going to wear off, and I’m going to smell like an Omega again, and I don’t care. I’m done with SHIELD, done with Captain America, all of it. I’m going after Bucky, and I’m not coming home until he’s safe. I—” 

He stops, feeling the blood pressure cuff start to inflate. 

Steve has recently graduated from an A-line to a regular blood pressure cuff. He’s learned to calm himself when the cuff starts to inflate, otherwise the reading will be too high and someone will inevitably poke their head in and fuss with the cuff, demand to know if his arm was bent, and stand over him until the retake is complete. 

Accordingly, he tries to take deep, calming breaths while it squeezes his arm tighter and tighter. 

“So this whole time,” Sam says slowly, “you’ve been pretending to be an Alpha? They _made_ you pretend to be an Alpha?” 

“They didn’t make me,” Steve says, with a curl of his lip. Self-disgust. “I volunteered.” 

“But not any more.” 

“No.” 

“And you’re going after Barnes.” 

“Bucky needs me. What HYDRA did to him—” The words get stuck in Steve’s throat, too sharp and hot and _furious_. 

“Steve. Hey.” 

“That’s not who he is, I swear. Bucky is—he’s the best man I ever knew. The best man I _know_. He’s brave, and kind, and—and he’s in there, somewhere, I know it. I _s_ _aw_ it, at the end. He’s just confused. If there was nothing left to save, he would have let me drown in that river, and instead he dove after me and pulled me out.” 

“Okay,” Sam says. 

“I’m getting him back,” Steve says fiercely. “If I have to pull HYDRA apart myself with my bare hands, piece by piece, to do it—I’m getting him back.” 

“Okay,” Sam says again, easy as anything. “You want any help with that?” 

  
  


Steve tells Natasha, too. He’s out of the hospital, when they finally talk, and sitting on what remains of his couch after SHIELD had raided his apartment in their crusade for the USB stick. 

After a long pause, Natasha exhales and slumps back into the pile of stuffing and plywood. 

“Jesus wept, Rogers, that’s _it?_ ” 

“What,” Steve says. 

“We just learned that HYDRA has been controlling SHIELD since its _inception_. I released the entire SHIELD intelligence database to the world, Fury killed the Secretary of the World Security Council, after faking his own death, and you just got out of the ICU. When you said you had something important to tell me, with that look on your face like—” She puts her head and in her hands, and for a second Steve thinks she’s crying, but then he realizes it’s her trying not to _laugh_. 

Well. 

Okay, Steve hadn’t thought about it like that. 

“I don’t think you’re supposed to laugh when your friend comes out to you,” Steve tells her sourly. 

“Steve, you’re coming out as being _cis-gendered_.” 

“Technically—technically not.” 

Natasha giggles hysterically. 

“Come on,” Steve complains. “This is at least the most surprising thing to happen to you this _week_.” 

Because Steve is easily manipulated, he ends up showing Natasha the photo Becca had given him almost two years ago, one of the last shreds of evidence that an Omega named Steven Barnes had ever existed. 

“You’re _adorable_ ,” Natasha coos. “Look at you, you’re practically pocket size. How tall were you?” 

“Rulers hadn’t been invented yet.” 

“Five two,” Natasha decides, which is pretty fucking close, so Steve doesn’t dignify it with a response. 

She holds the photo for a while longer. Steve wonders if she’s looking at him, or if she’s looking at Bucky. Wonders if she can see the love and joy there that’s so plain to him, or if she sees it like Steve had seen the photograph of his father his mother carried around—like an imaginary thing, flattened by paper, too frozen in time to give any warmth. 

“It’s not going to be an easy search,” Natasha says eventually, her hand moving to cover the photograph. “And if you do manage it, you might not like what you find.” 

“I don’t care,” Steve says. 

“What’s been done to him, it’s not—” 

“Nat,” Steve interrupts, looking into her eyes and willing her to understand. “He’s my _husband._ I’m going after him.” 

She exhales, and holds out the picture for Steve to take. “I’ll see what I can find for you.” 

  
  


With Natasha’s help, Steve manages to scrape together resources from the rubble of SHIELD, and then he and Sam set off in the first direction she points them in. 

They move across Eastern Europe like a forest fire, leaving HYDRA base after HYDRA base nothing but scorched, smoking ruins. Steve becomes an expert at tooth extraction, and when he manages to get the cyanide out in time, he uses every trick Natasha ever taught him on how to get information out of an enemy. Some of the tricks are kinder than others. And then, when he’s done, there’s a series of point-blank executions, one bullet to the head each. Then they burn the base to the ground. 

It’s just efficiency. 

Steve wonders what Sam thinks of him, sometimes. How many childhood fantasies he’s ruined. How many times Sam must think about leaving.

  
  


It’s at a safehouse in Orsha that Steve rides out his first heat since 1943. 

Sam locks him in the panic room, because they’re pretty sure it’s sound-proof, and Steve idiotically assumed that it would only be one or two days of persistent arousal and then they could go back to their business, just as it had always been with his heats.

What he’d forgotten, though, was that this was also his first proper heat since receiving the serum. 

He’s healthy, now. 

And like any other healthy Omega, his heats now last for _days_. 

Sam had left him a supply of non-perishables, water bottles, and a ten-euro dildo that he’d picked up from parts unknown. Twelve hours in, Steve forgets they all exist, and he’s a writhing, yowling mess. The world is on fire. His skin strains and aches to split, he chews his fingers, he grinds helplessly down against the tile floor, anything to take away this feeling that he’s utterly empty inside. In his more lucid moments, Steve recognizes that this is not a normal heat, not even for an Omega, the serum _did_ something—but mostly, he’s not lucid. 

_Alpha_ , he calls, again and again. _Alpha, Alpha, Alpha_. 

But no one comes. 

Later, he finds out that Sam had come in once—just once, when it had been three days and Steve still hadn’t emerged. Steve has no memory of it. 

He doesn’t think he sleeps at all because he would notice a reprieve if he got one. He spends hours on his elbows and knees, face pressed to the floor, rocking and keening as he shoves his fingers into his hole over and over and over, but every orgasm is followed by another surge of arousal. He’s so empty. He’s so _alone_. The hole inside of him is gaping, spreading, like his very soul is caving in. He doesn’t understand. Where is his Alpha? 

When it ends, Steve is so exhausted he falls asleep right on the concrete floor, covered in slick and saliva, water bottles and dried fruit utterly untouched. 

When he eventually emerges, Sam looks a little unnerved but seems to be striving for normal. 

“How long—” Steve starts, but his throat is like gravel. 

“Eight days, man,” Sam says, somewhere between terrified and impressed. “I, uh. Didn’t know they went that long.” 

“Me either,” Steve rasps. He moves gingerly over to the kitchen sink to get a glass of water. 

“Uh. A shower might be a good idea, bud,” Sam says delicately. 

He’s lucky Steve stopped to put on boxers and a t-shirt. 

“Thirsty,” Steve replies, and leans over to drink straight from the tap. 

“What about the water I left?” Sam asks. 

Steve pulls away long enough to say, “Still thirsty,” and then goes back to drinking. 

“You know, water toxicity is still a thing, even for super soldiers. Y’all still have electrolytes that can imbalance,” Sam informs him. 

Steve ignores him, and drinks until he doesn’t feel like his muscles are made of sandpaper. 

Six hours later, they get a lead on a man with a metal arm in Minsk, and they’re driving off into the middle of the night, Steve’s heart soaring with hope again. 

But they don’t find Bucky in Minsk. Just like they hadn’t found him in Kiev, Lutsk, Odessa or Ridne. 

Too often, Steve finds the crafting tools of the Winter Soldier—muzzles, chairs, cryotubes. Once, he finds a diary written in Russian, and he spends an hour on the phone with Natasha arguing about the safest way to translate it without risking interception. 

Which is how Steve ends up learning Russian. 

Which is how _Sam_ ends up learning Russian. 

“Priyvet,” Steve says. 

“Priyvet,” Sam replies. 

“Menya zavoot Steve.” 

“Menya zavoot Sam. Steve, this is really stupid.” 

Steve unpauses the tape deck, and Rosetta Stone Lady says, _“Ya iz Ameriki. Now you try!”_

But the journal, for all the horrors that it ends up containing, brings them no closer to Bucky. 

  
  


Steve comes back to the motel room with an armload of Teremok—Russia’s answer to McDonalds, but with more blinis and less burgers. The dinner options are limited in this town, with the only other serious contender being the gas station, and Steve is sick to the back fucking teeth of oily, stale chebureki, so. Teremok it is. 

Sam glances up for only a second, and then goes back to the laptop he’s listlessly staring at. The blue glow illuminates the purpling bruise on his cheek and split skin just at the arch of his cheekbone. 

“The lady at the front desk wanted to know why my Alpha was letting me go out alone, in the dark,” Steve informs him, as he dumps the bags of food next to Sam. 

Sam rolls his eyes. 

"She said something else, too, I think about my coat? How do you say coat again? Kurtka?" 

Sam shrugs, and clicks something. 

Steve watches him, waiting for… something more. But it doesn't come.

"She said a different word, but I think it was still coat," Steve adds, trying. "Gotta look it up. Maybe we can redo the chapter on clothes next time we're in the car." 

Sam tips his head to the side. 

“Yeah,” he agrees, and after a moment he looks up and meets Steve's gaze, and he visibly dredges up An Effort. "Sorry, man, I'm just tired." 

"Take a break over dinner," Steve suggests. "I'll watch the line for a while." 

Sam sighs, long and quiet, and Steve knows it's because that isn't the kind of tired Sam was talking about. 

Sam has been running as one half of a two-man mission to exterminate a global Nazi syndicate for the past four months, subsisting on take-out and sleeping in roach motels, patching up injuries in the backseat of the car with drug store supplies and stolen medications. They haven’t stayed in the same city for more than five days. They’ve had to ditch their bags and start fresh at least twice. He’s had to watch Captain America tie men down and extract their teeth with nothing but a bowie knife and a complete lack of mercy, had to watch Steve break finger after finger, ankle after wrist, toe after toe until he got the information he wanted. 

Sam doesn't need Russian fast food and a nap. 

He needs to be in his own apartment, eating his own food, sitting on his own couch, hugging all his family members again and going to bed between sheets that actually smell like home. Steve would know. He’s been living in a foreign country since he woke up two years ago, and it's gotten easier, but there are still days when Steve feels like the world is too loud, too _alien_ and every touch grates his nerves like a fraying rope. The only difference is that Sam’s home is just a trans-Atlantic flight away. 

So when Sam ends up taking a bullet to the leg the following week, Steve decides enough is enough. 

“You’re going home,” Steve says. 

“Like hell I am.” 

“Yes, you are.” 

“I’m not leaving you here!” Sam protests. 

“You’re not _leaving_ me anywhere. You’re going home, and I happen to be staying.” 

“Come on, man, don’t bench me for this—”

“Sam. This is your honorable discharge, all right? I can’t even begin to say how grateful I am that you’ve stayed this long, but. You never owed me this. And I want you to go home, and spend Thanksgiving with your family, and save a seat for me at Christmas. All right?” 

Sam looks at him with narrowed eyes. 

Steve stares back, unrepentant. 

In the end, Sam goes home. 

  
  


After Sam leaves, Steve heads back onto the road and tries to summon up some of the energy that he’d had back in the beginning, when he was angry and hurt and brimming with vengeance, but… it just isn’t there. He’s tired, too. But then he thinks about how tired _Bucky_ must be, how hungry, how scared, how alone he must feel—and Steve keeps going. 

It’s harder without Sam, for multiple reasons. Steve was always grateful to have him, but the difference between invading a HYDRA base with a partner and invading it _alone_ is stark. Even Captain America can only fight so many men at once. There’s also the small things, like no longer being able to split night watch, or the long drives, and there’s no one to get the laundry started while the other finds dinner. 

By the beginning of December, Steve is… God, _somewhere_ in southern Russia. He can’t even remember which town he’s in anymore. It’s just barely large enough to justify its movie theater and Lenin statue, and just small enough that HYDRA had apparently felt comfortable homing several agents here to act as intermediaries for transports. 

Steve is nothing if not an expert in rooting out HYDRA agents at this point, and within two days he finds their safehouse. 

The first three go down easy, but someone gets in a lucky shot to his shoulder, and it’s slowing Steve down more than he wants to admit. 

He’s been counting bullets. He knows that the man only has two shots left before he has to reload, and the gun he’s holding had come from an ankle holster, so that’s probably the last of his weapons. The woman has at least eight shots left, and he can clearly see another gun at her waist. 

Steve throws the shield left-handed at the woman, which doesn’t give him as much power or precision, but it still catches her in the side and sends her flying. At the same time he makes a grab for the man’s gun—doesn’t get it, but manages to make him fire at the ceiling. Another bullet wasted.

Steve reaches out with his bad arm and catches the shield, gritting his teeth against the blast of agony in his shoulder. He raises it just in time to deflect the second bullet, and then lowers it with a grin. 

The man holds up his gun, resolute, but Steve knows it’s empty now. He’s bluffing. 

They tussle only briefly before Steve manages to get him down to the floor, and Steve almost has him when the man swings up with a plank of wood and rams it into Steve’s injured shoulder, and Steve is momentarily blinded with pain. 

A shot rings out, and Steve rolls with the shield on pure reflex. 

The woman is shooting left-handed, now. Her right arm hangs limply by her side. 

_Shit_ , Steve thinks, and tries to throw the shield again, but he’s also left-handed and sloppy, and the woman ducks out of the way. 

The shield goes flying through plaster and into the next room. 

Steve has only a split second to decide, before he’s bolting out of the room and into the next, dodging bullets as he goes. The shield is wedged into the ceiling there, and Steve leaps, grabs it free, and spins just as the woman appears in the doorway and starts shooting again. 

Steve immediately dodges left, taking the widest circuit of the room he can, trying to get her to waste as many bullets as possible, and as they come he counts _thirteen, fourteen, fifteen_ — 

But the sixteenth shot, the final bullet, never comes. 

There’s silence. 

Steve crashes into the corner, taking a defensive crouch, but when he looks up, the woman is a crumpled heap on the floor. 

Just beyond, he can see the man on the floor as well, unmoving. 

Steve draws in a careful breath, listening, but the house is perfectly quiet. 

Then Bucky comes stomping in with an expression like a thundercloud and Steve stops breathing entirely. 

Last time Steve had seen Bucky, it had been on the helicarrier, Bucky’s fist coming down on him again and again until Steve had lost sight of him completely. Since then, Bucky has only existed in the theoretical. _Someone_ had pulled him out of the river. _Someone_ had gotten to those HYDRA bases first. 

Steve has spent a thousand hours imagining Bucky’s existence. If he was cold, or hurt, or hungry. He’s bargained his soul away a dozen times over, just to know that Bucky was okay, and now— 

“Bucky,” Steve manages. 

Bucky stops short, scowling, eyes fixed on Steve’s right shoulder. 

“Bol’no,” Bucky declares unhappily. 

“Tol’ko nemnogo,” Steve replies, voice cracking on the words. He swallows hard. 

Bucky’s frown deepens, and he reaches up with his flesh hand and stops just short of where the ache is sharpest in Steve’s shoulder, hovering in the air, not touching but only just. A sluggish warmth trickles down Steve’s arm. 

“Inside?” Bucky asks, and in English, his voice sounds rougher for some reason. 

“No,” Steve answers. “Through and through.” 

Bucky nods a little, but his eyes don’t leave the wound. 

“...Bucky,” Steve says, quiet and broken. 

This close, Steve can smell the Alpha scent he’s been without for so long. He can feel the heat radiating off of Bucky’s body like a furnace. His body aches, physically _aches,_ to step just six inches closer and be home again. 

He’s so close that he can see Bucky’s nostrils flare as his chest expands, and he can see the way his pupils dilate in response. 

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve says again, hope surging in his chest. 

Bucky breathes in again, and on the exhale his shoulders relax just a little. Steve gives him a shaky smile—this is the first time Bucky has smelled him in _seventy years_ —and he watches as Bucky takes in another breath and his eyelids flutter closed. His body sways a little, and his right hand brushes against the fabric of Steve’s tac vest. 

Steve _shivers_ with it. 

He can’t stop staring at Bucky’s face, greedily drinking in every last detail—the familiar angle of his jaw, slope of his nose, the cleft of his chin, the tiny freckle near his hairline. His lips are chapped, and the hollows of his cheeks are too sharp. His hair desperately needs to be washed. Steve can’t remember if Bucky had had this many lines on his face before, if the war had put them there or if it was HYDRA. 

Steve wants to wrap him up and never let him go.

 _I love you_. He doesn't dare say it out loud but he feels it in every cell of his being, screams it into the very back recesses of his mind. _I love you, and all of this, all of you—if this is who you are now, then I love this, too. I miss you. Let's go home._

He doesn’t know how long they stand there, breathing. 

The silence is broken by a _whirr-click-sniccccckt_ noise that Steve takes a second to realize is the sound of Bucky’s metal hand moving. 

The fingers are clenched into a fist, now. 

Bucky’s eyes open, and he takes a step back, shaking his head like a dog coming out of water. 

Steve’s heart crashes. 

“Bucky, wait—” 

But Bucky’s face has gone hard, his eyes flinty, and the lines of his body are at attention once again. 

“Come home with me,” Steve says desperately. “Please. I’ll take care of you, I can protect you, I swear—” 

Bucky shoves something at him. “Don’t drop your fucking gun next time,” he snarls. 

Steve takes the gun—long since emptied of bullets—and throws it to the side. “Come home with me, Buck.” 

But Bucky shakes his head, and turns away. 

“ _Please_ ,” Steve begs, without a trace of dignity. 

But if he’d thought his heart was already breaking, it’s nothing to the way it tears open when Bucky turns around and Steve sees the look on his face. 

“Don’t ask me that,” Bucky says softly. “Not yet.” 

Steve swallows against an entire tide of grief. 

“When?” he chokes out. 

“I don’t know,” Bucky says. 

“Let me _help_.” 

“No.” 

Bucky’s answer is flat and final, like a death blow. 

Steve breathes in, and counts to seven, _one, two, three, four, five, six, seven_ and back down. 

“Okay,” he eventually manages. 

Bucky doesn’t reply. He turns to leave again. 

“ _Wait_ ,” Steve says, scrambling at his vest, ripping at straps instead of undoing the clasps, hands clumsy and over-strong, but he gets through layer after layer and eventually he tears through the kevlar, too, and there, tucked against the fabric closest to his vulnerable belly— 

“Take this,” Steve says, holding out the photograph he’s been carrying for months. 

Their wedding day, seventy-eight years ago. 

Bucky looks down at it uncertainly, but eventually reaches out. He uses his metal hand, but he takes it like it’s made of spun glass. He stares down at the photo with an unreadable expression. 

_That’s us_ , Steve wants to say, but as he stares down at the tiny versions of them, so young and so in love, he wonders if it’s actually true. 

Bucky tucks it into a pocket of his tac vest, and then he walks away. 

He doesn’t look back, and Steve doesn’t call after him again. 

  
  


After Bucky leaves, Steve sets a timer on his watch for ten minutes, and then he sits on the floor of the shot-out house and counts, and counts, and counts, and counts. 

Then the timer goes off, and he gets up again, puts his shield over his back, and walks out into the night. 

  
  


It’s been less than six hours since Steve last saw Bucky, and he’s already halfway into a heat. Goddamn fucking _pheromones_. 

A frantic phone call to Natasha had gotten him coordinates to the nearest safehouse with a panic room, on the outskirts of Kharkiv, and Steve has been driving like a madman ever since he’d gotten the address into the GPS. He can feel the heat coming like a fever, making his skin hot and tight, making him _itch_. 

There are a lot of hotels with heat rooms, but when you’re Captain America and you’ve spent the last six months on a rampage across Europe killing hundreds of members of HYDRA— 

When you’re in a foreign country and you know you’re about to be completely helpless for eight days straight— 

When you’re _alone_ , and _injured_ , and _scared—_

A regular heat room isn’t enough. He’s got to make it to the safehouse. 

Somewhere out there, Bucky is probably verging on a rut right now. Steve hopes he has somewhere safe to go, but he can’t think about it too hard or he’ll turn the car around and drive right back to that tiny Russian village, even though he _knows_ Bucky is long gone. 

Steve pushes the thought away, and glances at the gas gauge again. 

The orange light has been on for thirty minutes. Steve only has about forty miles to Kharkiv, but whatever fumes the car is running off of, they’re not gonna get him another forty miles. He’s gotta refill. 

The next little gas sign he sees, Steve takes the exit and follows the signs to a green and white OKKO. The lights are still on, and there’s a sign in Ukranian and Russian advertising a 24/7 mini-mart. 

Steve swallows. 

He’s desperately thirsty, but he doesn’t dare go inside. Not like this. He needs to pump his gas and go. 

He parks next to the fuel pump and, with trembling hands, he fumbles out a credit card. He flips open the gas cap, and when he sits back in the seat he feels a wash of heat that runs down his back and down between his cheeks, and— 

Warmth trickles between them. 

Steve takes in a deep breath, and reminds himself to focus. He has to get gas, and get to the safehouse. 

He gets out of the car, and the Ukranian winter air is like a cooling balm to his overheated skin. It feels _incredible._

Gas. 

He needs gas. 

Steve inhales the icy night air, and focuses. He gets the card swiped, guesses his way through the Ukranian screens and eventually gets gas pumping into the car. He does it all left-handed, his shoulder still throbbing from the gunshot only hours ago. 

He watches the numbers on the screen go up, and another wash of heat crashes over him like a tidal wave, flooding his underwear and making him _shiver_. 

_Come on_ , Steve thinks, watching the numbers of liters go from four, to five, to six. _Come on, come on, come on_. 

“Pryvit,” a voice says from behind him. 

Steve whirls around, and sees a man—maybe ten years older than him, just as tall but thick around the middle, wearing coveralls and a heavy jacket. He looks dirty, smells of alcohol, but underneath it Steve can smell Alpha. 

Behind him is another man, an inch shorter and forty pounds stockier, with a thick beard that does nothing to hide the excitement on his face. 

Oh, shit. 

“Ya ne khochu nepreyatnosti,” Steve says carefully, and reaches behind himself to unlock the gas nozzle. He thanks God that he prepaid. 

“Akh, vin hovorytʹ rosiysʹkoyu!” the first man announces, looking pleased. 

“Trokhy zahublena rosiysʹka,” the second agrees. 

They’re speaking Ukranian. 

Though Steve doubts that it would make much of a difference if they spoke Russian, anyway. He doubts they're interested in anything he has to say.

“Shcho malenʹkyy khlopchyk, yak ty, robysh na vulytsi sam?” the first asks, eyebrows going up mockingly.

And, to be fair, even without speaking Ukranian, Steve knows exactly where this is going. 

“Ostav' menya v pokoye,” he tries in Russian, pointlessly. 

“Ty duzhe harnenʹka,” the second man says, licking his lips. “I ty pakhnesh hotovym dlya cholovika.”

Steve’s heart is pounding in his chest. 

Normally, this would be no contest. 

But normally, Steve isn’t halfway into a heat with a bum shoulder. 

Seizing the element of surprise, Steve makes a dash for the car door, ramming the closest one with his left shoulder as hard as he can—enough to send him stumbling back—and Steve’s right hand is in his coat pocket fumbling with the keys and he reaches for the handle— 

He’s grabbed by the right arm and swung around. 

Pain explodes in his shoulder, and the world spins. 

A shockwave rocks his body in response to skin on skin—an _Alpha is touching him_ and he _wants it_ —

 _No._

“Let _go_ ,” Steve growls, reaching with his good hand to yank him off— 

The second man is there, grabbing his other arm and _shoving_ him against the car. His right side hits the frame, and a fresh blaze of agony makes his vision swim, knocks the air from his lungs. 

This can’t be happening. 

It’s not. 

It’s _not_ happening. 

He struggles against the man’s weight, but he’s heat-weak and dizzy, and the other man’s got his injured arm pinned like a vice. It’s not going to work. 

So instead he kicks out, _hard_ , and gets one straight in the groin, gets the second just in the knee but it gives him enough time to wind his leg around the other, bend, and _shove_ with his good shoulder, sending the man to the ground. Steve kicks him in the face as he passes, and dodges the hands that blindly grab for his ankles. He pulls out the keys, slides into the car, turns the ignition, and _floors_ it. 

Flying down the highway, Steve can’t stop shaking. He can’t stop hyperventilating. 

He should probably pull over but he can’t stop until he gets to the panic room. 

They’d almost— 

Steve had almost been— 

No. 

No, he hadn’t. The fight had been a minute, at most, and it was barely a fight. He’s Captain America. They’d never stood a _chance_ against him. They’d had their hands on him for maybe thirty seconds. Less than that. He'd never been in any real danger, he'd defended himself, they hadn't stood a chance against him.

He’s fine. 

Nothing had happened. Nothing was ever _going_ to happen. 

Captain America would never be— 

Steve's hands flex on the steering wheel, and he presses down on the gas pedal. 

  
  


He makes it to the safehouse in thirty minutes, shaking so hard he gets the entry combo wrong on the first try, and so heady with heat and panic that when he makes it inside he almost forgets to lock the door behind himself. 

He shuts himself in the panic room and emerges nine days later, trembling and tear-stained. 

Then he buys a plane ticket for New York City, and he goes home. 

At the airport, the check-in attendant looks at him sympathetically and says, “No Alpha flying with you today, hon?” 

“No,” Steve says shortly. 

“Oh, well, don’t you worry. We’ll look after you just fine.” 

It pisses him off. 

It pisses him off _a lot_. 

He spends the whole flight home stewing about the fact that he can’t get on a _goddamn_ plane by himself, that apparently that requires the protection of an Alpha when just over a week ago Steve had been pumping gas and minding his own business and two Alphas had tried to— 

_Tried_ , he reminds himself. Tried, but not succeeded. 

But the more he thinks about it, the more furious he gets. 

He’s been living as an Omega for the last six months, and the slew of microaggressions had followed him around Europe, sure as anything, and Steve had told himself it wasn’t a big deal. He’d dealt with worse in the thirties. This was just part of being an Omega. This was just one more fucked up thing in the world. 

But what if Steve _hadn’t_ been Captain America? Anyone else, that close their heat, injured, cornered by two six-foot Alphas in the middle of the night— 

And furthermore, it’s been seventy years, and Steve _still_ has to deal with Alphas catcalling him when he’s just trying to find a kebab shop for dinner? He still has to be escorted by an Alpha after dark? He can’t get on a _plane_ by himself?

By the time Steve gets off the plane at JFK, he’s come to a decision. 

He’s pissed off, and it's time to do something about it. 

  
  


Steve goes to Stark Tower, mostly for lack of other options, and Tony is as good as his word and replies to his text with:

 _In Cali but yeah sure, 78th floor is  
_ _yours, ask JARVIS if you need anything.  
_ _Did you find nemo?????_

 _No_ , Steve replies, and slips his phone back into his pocket. Then half a second later he pulls it back out and adds, _Thank you_. 

He gets a string of sad-face emojis in reply. 

_When you get back I need your help  
_ _with a project, if you have time._

There’s about a half-second pause before Tony replies with: 

_A PROJECT??? What is it? OoO So  
_ _mysterious cap!!!_

Steve rolls his eyes. 

_I’ll tell you when you get home_. 

Steve isn’t exactly an expert, but texting probably isn’t the best way to inform people of sudden gender changes. 

He gets another string of sad emojis, these ones with tears. 

  
  


Tony gets home late on a Wednesday night and has blocked off the evening for his reunion with Pepper. Steve has a vaguely scheduled lunch meeting with him the next day (as definitively as Tony can ever schedule anything), but instead he gets a call before the sun has fully risen. 

“Mornin’, Cap! You know how you’re always saying you’d love to punch Christopher Columbus?” 

Steve blinks up at the top of his bedroom, wondering about the point of cell phones if Tony was just going to talk to him through the ceiling. 

“No?” he says eventually. 

“Really? Seems right up your alley. Anyway, this is your chance. Central Park’s gone all _Night at the Museum,_ except instead of playing fetch with a dinosaur, the statues have decided to kill off all tourists.”

Steve misses the pop culture reference, but he still gets the general picture. _“How?_ ” 

“Don’t know. Ten minutes, top floor, let’s go find out?” 

Steve nods, half sure that Tony is watching a video feed of him, and says, “Yeah, okay.” 

“Great. Dibs on Balto, by the way.”

The uniform Steve puts on feels wrong against his skin, though he couldn’t tell you if it felt too big or too small. Just… wrong. He laces up his boots too tight, grabs the shield that he hasn’t polished in half a year, and heads up to the top of the Tower. 

Tony is downing a glass of something gloopy and green when Steve walks in. He holds up a finger when he notices Steve, gulps down the rest of it with impressive speed, and then sets the glass down on the counter and makes a face like he’d just swallowed a live eel. 

“Eugh. Sorry. Kale smoothie, I promised Pepper one a day. Don’t worry, I didn’t forget about our—” Tony pauses, glancing at Steve again with a frown. “You got a new cologne there, Cap?” 

“Nope,” Steve says. 

Tony stares. 

Stares some more. 

“Well,” he says eventually. “I guess I know what that meeting was gonna be about.”

“That was part of it,” Steve agrees. 

“Only _you_ would schedule a goddamn lunch meeting to come out as transgender, I swear to God.” 

Steve holds in a sigh. "I'm not transgender." 

"Genderqueer? Genderfluid? Agender? Non-trinary?" 

"No, I—" 

"Androgynous? I gotta admit, I'm running out of labels here. Demigendered? Bigendered?" 

"Cisgendered, actually," Steve says. 

Tony opens his mouth, but then he visibly processes what Steve says, and closes it again. 

"I've been… pretending," Steve tells him. "To be an Alpha." 

"You—" Tony's eyes go up and down Steve's body in disbelief. _"You?_ "

Steve's stomach squirms and his skin prickles beneath the suit, but he ignores it like always, a little easier each time. and says, "Yeah. Me. The serum, it—uh. I used to be a lot smaller." 

"So you're… shit, I can't say 'a real Omega', that's offensive. You're _biologically_ an Omega?" 

"Since birth," Steve confirms. 

"You're blowing my mind, here, Cap," Tony informs him. 

Steve shrugs uncomfortably. 

"So why… Or how, I guess?"

"Mostly, your dad," Steve says. 

_"My dad?"_

Steve shifts. “Aren’t there statues murdering people right now?” 

“Oh, _shit_. Yeah, let’s go.” 

Tony starts moving toward the launch platform, and the suit assembles itself around him as he goes. 

“Holy shit. Captain America is an _Omega_ ,” he repeats incredulously. “And of course I find out five minutes before a fight, it’s like you did it on _purpose_. How the hell did it stay secret? They had Pseuds back in the forties? What about Aunt Peg—” 

Tony’s litany is lost beneath his faceplate for a second, and then the microphone takes over. 

“—how many times I called you a knothead after we first met? And you don’t even _have_ one—”

Steve sighs tiredly, and follows Stark out to the launch pad. 

  
  


Tony gets to punch Balto, from which he takes a perverse enjoyment. Steve doesn’t understand what grudge he has against a sled dog, but it’s a nice distraction from the fact that Steve himself accidentally beheads Alice in Wonderland. They’re lucky that only the statues of Central Park have been brought to life. Steve has been steadfastly avoiding the life-size statue of himself on the Lower East Side since he’d first learned of its existence, and today is not the day he wants to meet his bronze counterpart, much less fight him. 

After he and Tony manage to find the culprit, destroy his statue-animating device, and arrest him with only minimal damage to Belvedere Castle, they end up having to do the standing-around bit until someone high enough up on the food chain arrives to take their statements. 

“There should be a law about this,” Tony mutters, faceplate down so that the NYPD are treated to the full force of his scowl. “Like in school. If the teacher’s more than fifteen minutes late, you legally get to leave.” 

“I don’t think that’s true.” 

“Which of us hasn’t attended school since before the invention of ballpoint pens?” 

“Used to be a lot less pigeons around, back when we had to kill ‘em for quills,” Steve agrees. 

“You did not.” 

“The Depression was hard times, Tony. A dead bird was dinner and school supplies all in one. Pigeon-hunting was a regular sport at Prospect Park.” 

“Rogers, I know you’re messing with me here.”

“We used the vertebrae to make dice.” 

“Please stop.” 

“If you mixed the blood with flour and eggs, you could make—” 

“ _All right_ , thank you!” 

Steve grins. 

“Your brain did not defrost correctly, I swear to God.” 

  
  


They get back to the Tower about an hour later, just in time for lunch. Tony had ordered enough Ethiopian for an entire baseball team, so it’s a good thing Steve never got to eat breakfast. 

“So,” Tony says, unfurling the injera enough to rip off a section, and dragging it through something Steve thinks is lentil stew. “I think I speak for all of us when I say, _what the fuck, Steven_.” 

“All of us?” 

“It’s a royal us. Is your name even Steven? I assume they made you a new identity back in the forties, after the serum. You did actually get the serum, right? No, you did. SHIELD verified it in your blood samples, I saw the reports. Although I assume SHIELD was in on the secret in the first place? They had to have been, if you were on Pseuds up until now.” 

Tony looks over at Steve expectantly. 

“You seem to be answering all your questions just fine on your own,” Steve points out. 

“Thrill me anyway.” 

Steve sighs, and begins unrolling his own injera. “Yes, my real name is Steve Rogers, but some of the other details were altered. I really did get the serum. SHIELD as an organization has no idea I was on Pseuds, because I got them directly from Fury.” 

Tony nods, thoughtfully. “Who else knows?” 

“Natasha. Sam. Peggy.” Steve pauses. “A lot of dead HYDRA agents.” 

“And my dad," Tony says, with a look on his face like just saying the name leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

Steve nods. “It was… kind of his idea.” 

Tony snorts. “It would have been.” 

"Peggy helped,” Steve says. 

“How’d you end up getting the serum, anyway?” Tony asks. 

“Accident. There really was a whole camp where they trained and selected the best candidate and drove him over to New York, but… I got it instead.” 

“Right. The assassination. And they didn’t have any serum left, so they were stuck with you.” 

Steve nods. “Yep.” 

"An Omega." 

"Yeah." 

"And they couldn't have Captain America be an Omega," Tony guesses. 

"No," Steve says. 

"So they made you pretend to be an Alpha."

"Well," Steve hedges. "I had a choice." 

"Yeah, I bet the other options were _amazing_." 

Steve eats a bite of goat curry, and doesn't reply.

"Fuck," Tony says. 

"Yeah."

They both chew in silence for a few minutes, and then Tony eventually says, “You know, my dad was... one of the pioneers for Omegas in the workforce. All the ORA groups treat him like some kind of hero, and I guess he was. SI was one of the only places that employed Omegas, during the war, and afterward Dad just continued to expand on it. He invested in all this shit—birth control, heat suppressants, everything—and made sure his employees got it discounted. Paved the way for a million other companies.” 

“He was a good man,” Steve says quietly. 

“Yeah, well, he had this phrase _—everyone’s employable_ ,” Tony says, looking at Steve, but he has to shake his head. Howard hadn’t had that yet, back when Steve knew him. “You know why he loved hiring Omegas so much?” 

Steve shakes his head again. 

“Because you can keep an Omega employed for a lot less than you can a Beta,” Tony says. “Especially if you tell ‘em that their wages are just lower to pay for the birth control and heat suppressants you’ve got a monopoly on. It’s a neat profit. Pay five cents to make a pill, market value is fifty cents each, sell it to your employees at half cost and you’ve still got twenty cents in hand. Four hundred percent profit.”

Steve stares, trying to picture the Howard he knew saying exactly that, and… not finding it as difficult as he’d like. 

Tony shrugs. “But, you know. At least he _employed_ them, that’s what everyone remembers. By the time I came along, he was convinced that he’d fixed all the problems in the world an Omega could face,” Tony says, with a bitter laugh. “He had no patience for inequality. Take your meds and get to work, just like everyone else.” 

Steve has read the headlines, about what Tony has done during his time at SI—equal pay. Heat leave. Anti-harassment training. 

He hadn’t thought about the fact that he’d had to put them in place, because Howard Stark hadn’t. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve says.

“Please. You knew him for, what, two years? He had fifty more after that to become an asshole.” 

Steve shrugs, and takes a bite of curry. 

Tony mops up the last of the lentil stew. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before,” Steve says, eventually. 

Tony waves this away. 

“I wasn’t ready before, I guess. No good reason for it, just—just me being a coward.” 

Tony’s eyebrows go up at that, but Steve forges on before the witty comment can come. 

“I want you to help me tell everyone else.” 

Tony visibly braces himself. “Like… Thor and Clint?” 

“Like, the world. A—a press conference. Interview. Something. You’ve, uh… No offense, but you’ve got the most experience of anyone I know with this kind of thing.” 

Tony snorts with laughter. “JARVIS, save that for Pepper please.” 

“Last thirty seconds saved, sir,” JARVIS replies. 

“Or Pepper, or your PR team, whoever,” Steve says. “You know I’ve done them before, but they were always for SHIELD or the Avengers, and this is—I really want to get this right.” 

“Look, Mulan, obviously I can do that, but—you’ve thought about this, right? You’re about to commit political suicide with this. People are _not_ going to be happy to hear that their favorite All American GI Joe is an Omega.” 

“I really don’t give a shit. Maybe they should take a second and think about _why_ they don’t like the thought of Captain America as an Omega.” 

Tony sighs. “I knew you were gonna say that.” 

“So why’d you ask?” 

“Because—I know it’s fucked up—but you could probably do a lot more good if you keep pretending to be an Alpha than if you come out as an Omega,” Tony says, and then when sees Steve's expression he shakes his head. “No, don’t look at me like that. I’m serious! You’ve got pull, right now. People listen to you. _Moderates_ listen to you. Once they know you’re an Omega, you’re gonna lose _all_ that power.” 

“Tony,” Steve says.

Tony stares back at him, and heaves a sigh. “Okay, fine. It was worth a shot. Don’t come crying to me when you try to talk about the wage gap and they just want to ask when you’re finally having a damn baby.” 

  
  


Steve spends the night before the conference watching Mulan for the first time. He takes a picture of his feet propped on the coffee table and the screen behind them, and sends it to Tony with the caption, _Think I need a lucky cricket_. 

_SPOILER!!!! The cricket isn’t lucky._

  
  


**Steven Rogers Press Conference**

**12/22/2014**

**_Rogers (13:17)  
_ ** _I want to thank you all, for coming out here today. Uh. I don’t do a lot of these, so I’m going to have to ask your forgiveness if I look at my paper here a little too much. This speech—what I have to say tonight is real important to me, and I want to get it right. And you can’t see it, but there’s a whole team of people standing behind the stage right now who worked real hard to make this press conference possible, so. Thank you to them._

_Let me begin by saying that I am so grateful to this country for bringing me out of the ice and back into the world. I have been truly privileged to serve you as Captain America these last three years, just as I served our country back in World War II. I’ve had a lot to learn, in that time. Computers got smaller. Buildings got bigger. Los Angeles stole the Dodgers. But one thing that hasn’t changed is that our country still stands apart for its integrity, its compassion and its courage, and I am proud to count myself still among its defenders._

_In 1943, when Dr. Erskine, Mr. Stark and the SSR were choosing the first soldier to receive the super serum, they looked for a soldier with remarkable physical and mental abilities. They chose an Alpha who conducted himself with dignity and honor, who was willing to sacrifice himself for science and for his country, all with the goal of creating a breed of soldier who could stand up to the Axis powers that were decimating Europe at the time. This must all sound real conceited of me, but—the thing is. The reason I asked you to come here today is... that soldier was not me._

_That soldier was Gilmore Hodge. He never received the serum, but he went on to bravely give his life for his country anyway, on August 24th, 1944 in Paris, France._

_My name was Steven Barnes, and I was a lab assistant who was gravely injured during the assassination of Dr. Erskine. I was a poor, asthmatic Omega from Brooklyn with no particular skill or talent. But I was lucky enough to have quick-thinking friends who used what remained of the serum in the wake of the attack to save my life, and in the process, made me into the super soldier that Gilmore Hodge was supposed to have become. As you know, to date, no one has been able to correctly reproduce the serum since Dr. Erskine’s death. My body was all that remained of the project._

_Back in 1943, Omegas weren’t even allowed in the Army, so the government wasn’t exactly sure what to do with me—I was fast, and strong, and everything else the serum had promised to do. But I was still an Omega. So, after some—uh, excuse me—after some discussion, it was decided that Steven Barnes could not exist anymore, and Steven Grant Rogers, an Alpha, needed to take his place as Captain America. And that’s who I’ve been ever since._

_But that ends today. Today, I am Steven Barnes, and I am an Omega._

_For the past three years, I have been witness to how far Omegas have come since 1945. We fill college halls and government seats. We are scientists, and artists, and soldiers, and everything in between. Leaders like Esteban Gonzalez, who was instrumental in passing Title 17 last year, which guaranteed heat leave for all Omegas in the state of Michigan, and Jacqueline Riley-Powell, who led the march on Washington for Omega rights last year. I have tried my best to support their causes and others like them over the past three years, but I know that where we stand today is not just because of my work, or their work, but the dedication and bravery of thousands of Omegas before us._

_But what I have also seen, is that Omegas do not yet enjoy equal treatment. In fact, a lot of Americans don't receive equal treatment, it isn't limited to just Omegas—but that's not what I'm here to talk about today. The fact is that Omega children are the most prevalent gender in the US foster system, despite only comprising twenty percent of the population at large. One in four Omegas have been a victim of sexual assault, and one in five will experience a teenaged pregnancy. In seven states, it is still possible to count a shared heat as a legally binding marriage, and in two of those states that law applies to minors. There are only two US Representatives who are Omegas, and there has never been an Omega Senator or Supreme Court Justice in the history of the United States._

_I realize that my real gender is an inconvenient truth, for many people, and I promise you coming forward is not a decision I made lightly. I understand that people may feel betrayed. I understand that I may lose my standing in the military and I may very well be asked to step down as Captain America. I—well, I can’t control those things. All I can tell you is that I have always done my best to act with the same integrity, compassion and courage that I know to be in the hearts of all my fellow countrymen—and I will continue to serve my country and its people in whatever way I am able. But from now on, I will do it as an Omega._

_Thank you._

**_Rep (13:36)  
_ ** _The Captain will not be answering questions at this time. Thank you._

  
  


“Well, if it isn’t the man of the hour himself.” 

“ _Peggy_.” Steve could cry at the sound of her voice. 

“It’s been six months of radio silence, you know. I hadn’t expected to learn you were back in America by the _television_.” 

“Sorry, Peg,” Steve says, wincing. 

“You always were the dramatic one. Honestly, Steve.” 

“I’m not dramatic!” 

Peggy is silent over the phone. 

"I’m _not_.” 

“You’ve gone viral, you know. They’re calling it ‘Omegagate’.” 

“That’s not all they’re calling it.” 

“Well, it’s probably the least offensive name I've heard, anyway. Do yourself a favor, darling, and skip over Fox News tonight. You are somewhere safe, I presume? I heard there’s quite a lot of protests.” 

“Uh. Yeah.” Steve glances out his window, and can just barely make out the barricades below that now surround Stark Tower. “I’m good. Luckily, Pepper’s got some experience with publicity crises.” 

“Good. You’re trending on Twitter, you know.” 

“You have a Twitter?” 

“I most certainly do not. But Twitter is apparently worthy of discussion on CNN, so I learn these things anyway. Hashtag _CaptainOmega_ , is evidently… trending.” 

“Great.” 

She’s quiet for a long moment, and then eventually, she says, “It was a lovely speech you gave.” 

“Thanks. I, uh, I had a lot of help. Pepper’s got some great people working for her.” 

“And it was very brave, what you did.” 

Steve swallows. “It needed to be done.” 

“Yes, well, I think there’s a saying out there, about what’s right and what’s easy, but in the interest of not being trite, I’ll spare you.” 

Steve laughs a little bit. 

“Steve, I—” 

Peggy falters, like Steve has never heard her before. 

“What?” 

“I owe you an apology,” she says, at last. “I’ve known it for a while, in my heart, but seeing you up there today, it—well, it’s more clear than ever.” 

“You don’t owe me anything, Peg.” 

“I do. Steve.” She pauses, and takes in an audible breath. “Steve, I’m so sorry that Howard and I covered this up. We let history remember you as an Alpha because it was the easy thing to do. It was the _smart_ thing to do—we both capitalized hugely off your legacy, in a way that wouldn’t have been possible if we’d been honest about your gender after you’d died. And we both knew it. But it wasn’t the right thing to do. Not at all.” 

Steve had… honestly never thought that had been a decision to make. 

But of course, _someone_ had gone and created his fake parents’ birth certificates. Someone had put him on record at George Washington High School in the Lower East Side, and someone had gone and wiped all his paystubs from Dr. Erskine. Captain America’s legacy had only been half-built when Steve had died. 

“And it was wretched enough, to dishonor your memory in such a way—to dishonor _Barnes’_ memory in such a way—but then you came back to life, in a world that remembered the wrong Steve Rogers.” Peggy’s voice is wavering, but it holds true. “I’m so sorry, Steve. We took all the glory, and left you alone to tell the truth.” 

“I,” Steve starts, and then has to swallow and start over. “Peggy. I never blamed you for that, or Howard. I remember what it was like. God, it would have been _actual treason_ to announce that I was an Omega, even after I died. You both could have wound up in prison, or _executed_.” 

“I didn’t even ask you about it, the first time I saw you again.” 

“And I was too chickenshit to come see you for a year and a half,” Steve replies. “We aren’t perfect. There’s nothing to forgive.” 

Peggy sighs, but she apparently knows him well enough, because she moves on. “Well. What’s next on your agenda, then?” 

"Hiding from reporters,” Steve says. “And, uh. Waiting.” 

“Waiting?” 

Steve doesn’t reply. 

“Ah,” Peggy says, eventually. “You found him, then?” 

“He said he’ll come home when he’s ready.”

“And you _listened?_ ” 

“I have actually obeyed orders, before, you know. I don’t just run around doing the direct opposite of whatever anyone tells me.” 

“All evidence to the contrary,” Peggy says dryly. 

“He’ll come home when he’s ready,” Steve says firmly. “And I’ll be here waiting for him.” 

“Well, I suppose if you get bored, you can always hold another press conference. You seem to be rather good at them.” 

“Thanks, Peg, I—” 

“Yes?” 

“Sorry,” Steve says, grimacing. “I had a calendar alert. Tony has scheduled a gender reveal party for me, apparently.” 

“Oh dear.” 

“Yeah. I’m gonna let you go so I can talk him out of that one, okay?” 

“Yes, that does sound more pressing. Have a good night, Steve. I love you, and I’m proud of you.” 

“I love you, too, Peg.” 


	7. 2015

Steve doesn’t go outside too often these days, but he had woken up at five this morning and for the first time in almost a week there hadn't been rain lashing at the windows, and he hadn’t been able to resist pulling on his running shoes and heading out of the Tower. It’s foggy and cool, and by the time he reaches Central Park he’s gone through enough puddles that his shoes are soaked through, but there’s something so peaceful about New York at this hour that he’s content anyway. 

Things are better than they were back in January, at least. The news cycle has moved on, several times over, and the reporters that used to camp en mass outside the Tower are mostly off covering real news instead. Or different news, anyway. Steve is just glad to have them gone. Tony has yet to give up on his campaign to convince Steve that photographs of people wearing clothing with curse words on them are illegal to print because of 'obscenity laws'. Steve, who is not an idiot, is fully aware that Tony just wants the press to see him in a t-shirt that says FUCK. 

Several other joggers are apparently just as excited about the lack of rain today, because Steve isn't as alone as he usually is on the paths at this hour. But with his hat on and head down, no one looks twice at him. 

He loops around the whole park twice, taking the time to wind through the Ramble, circle around the lake three times, and pass the headless statue of Alice in Wonderland because he still finds the sight perversely amusing. By the time he starts back to the Tower, the sky is pink and the lamps in the park are dark. 

More people are out, by this point, and Steve sees several phones pointed in his direction when he's waiting for a crosswalk, but he ignores them with long practice. Back in the Tower, he veers left after coming through the main doors—avoiding the crowded hub of the lobby, his least favorite part about living here—and swipes through a side door that’s paneled with marble to blend in with the wall. 

And there, standing in front of the private elevator, is Bucky. 

Steve freezes. 

Bucky stares back at him, hands shoved into the pockets of a tattered jacket. His hair is limp and greasy, longer than before, and underneath a half-grown beard is a face that's hollow and thin. His eyes are rimmed red and there's a twitchiness to him that reminds Steve uncomfortably of a drug addict. 

He stares at Steve, and Steve stares back until a sharp pain in his hand makes him look down. 

He's crushed the swipe tag in his hand to pieces. 

"Hey," Steve eventually says, carefully even. 

"Hi," Bucky replies, with a voice like he hasn't spoken in weeks. 

Steve swallows, and the shock is quickly morphing into hope. "You're here," he says. 

Bucky nods. 

His heart is beating in his throat. "You're. You're done?" 

Bucky looks at him, and eventually replies, "I need help." 

It's not a yes. 

It's also not a no. 

"Okay," Steve says carefully. "Well. You want to come upstairs?" 

Bucky nods. 

So Steve goes to the elevator and hopefully waves the broken remains of his ID tag in front of the elevator buttons, without success. Sighing, he looks upward at the ceiling.

"JARVIS," Steve says, "can you let me in, please? I broke my ID." 

"Of course, Captain. Access code?" 

"Theta two nine sigma eight eight," Steve says. 

"Very good, sir. Shall I requisition a new ID for you?" 

"Please. Sorry." 

"It's not a problem." 

The elevator ride is silent. Steve can't stop looking at Bucky, at the bruises under his eyes, the dark stain on his sleeve, the fraying end of one shoelace... all these signs of the life Bucky’s been living without him. He wonders if Bucky has been in New York long. How many days has he been waiting around the Tower for Steve to leave? Has he been sleeping on the streets? God, in the _rain?_

Steve wants to scrub him clean, wrap him in blankets and feed him until the hunger in his eyes finally fades away—but Steve knows that whatever Bucky came here for, it wasn't that. 

So instead Steve suppresses every instinct in him that's screaming to _take care of him_ and instead stands awkwardly in his own kitchen, telling himself _don't touch_ and _don't pressure_ and _don't offer, let him ask_.

Bucky shoves his hands in his pockets, eyes darting around the apartment like it’s going to attack him, and the line of tension in his shoulders is evident even through the ragged jacket. It's killing Steve to see him so scared. He watches Bucky's unshaven jaw work, and can’t help but think about how Bucky used to shave religiously, wonders if that pet peeve was burned out of him, or if razors were a luxury too grand for an assassin on the run. He’d probably feel so much better with a shave.

Bucky’s mouth opens, but then his breathing hitches and he closes it again, looking away and fixing his eyes on the floor. 

He looks like he’s waiting to be hit. 

He’s so thin. He’s so _scared_. 

Steve can’t help it. “You want a seat?” he asks, stepping forward. “Dry clothes? Breakfast? You can—um. I've got oranges, and I was gonna make bagels, too, but all I've got is cinnamon raisin and I know you hate—" 

"I need help," Bucky interrupts. 

Steve stops, a hand on the cupboard where the bagels are stored. Everything in him wants to keep talking about breakfast like what Bucky had actually said was _I'm ready to come home_. 

But he hadn't said that. 

"Okay," Steve forces himself to say instead. "Tell me what you need."

Bucky’s shoulders hunch inward. “M’rut,” he says. 

Steve feels like all the air has been sucked out of his lungs. 

“Your—” 

“My rut,” Bucky repeats, through gritted teeth. “It’s coming. I need—help.” 

Not this. 

God, anything but this. 

Steve has been back on heat suppressants since his return to America. He still has nightmares sometimes about that week he spent in Kharkiv—and even back in the war, when Steve had only been a little fucked up, even back then he hadn’t been ready to let Bucky see him like that, and now he’s older and even more fucked up and— 

But this is Bucky. He’s come all this way, and he’s clearly _desperate_. 

Steve _owes_ him this. He can do this for him. 

“Okay,” he says. 

Bucky shakes his head and rocks on the balls of his feet, agitated. “HYDRA—they had something. There were so many drugs, and I don’t remember it all, but I know that—I never had ruts. But now I do. They won’t stop, they just keep—” He exhales, and a muscle in his jaw works. “I can’t find what they used to stop them. I tried the normal stuff, I tried them _all_ , but none of them work and I can feel one coming again, and I—last time I almost _got out_. I can’t do it again. Whatever drugs you guys have, whatever your friends use, I need you to get them for me, all right?” 

“You... You want me to help you _stop_ your rut?” Steve clarifies, his mind spinning. 

Relief floods his veins. 

“My ruts are—” Bucky can’t meet his eyes again. “I’m not _safe._ ” 

Steve doesn’t know if Bucky’s talking about the vulnerability that a rut brings, or the kind of things Bucky might do in search of relief, while rut-drunk and desperate. Maybe it’s both. He doesn’t care, he’s just glad that Bucky didn’t come here to spend his rut with _Steve_. 

Steve… isn’t ready for that. 

“Okay,” Steve says, again. “Okay. How long do you have?” 

“Tonight,” Bucky replies, and then scowls. “Maybe less. Last time I saw you—” 

“Yeah,” Steve agrees, remembering. 

An expression Steve doesn’t recognize flits across Bucky’s face, there and gone again, too fast to be identified.

“I think it’s the serum,” Steve says. “I have—it’s the same for me, with my heats. Normal suppressants stopped working after a while, and I had to keep upping the doses. It must be the same for you, too.” 

In fact, the more Steve thinks about it, the less hope he has. If Steve was resistant after only a few years, and Bucky has been suppressed for—God, _decades?_ HYDRA must have had him on _staggering_ doses of suppressants, at the end. It’s no wonder Bucky hasn’t found anything that helped. 

But Bucky is here, and he’s asking for help. They have to try. 

“Let me call a few people,” Steve says. 

  
  


Natasha knows exactly which medications the Soviets had used to suppress her own ruts. Tony has contacts in the pharmaceutical industry, and the drugs currently in development there. Bruce is the one who's taken over the dosing of Steve’s heat suppressants, and he's made a fairly decent study of supersoldier metabolism over the last few months. 

All this, and they still have no success. 

Bucky still descends into a rut before the sun sets that day. 

  
  


"He’s not a _literal_ ball and chain, you know,” Tony says. 

Steve looks up from his spot on the floor, back propped against the wall. “I know.” 

“JARVIS says you’ve been here the whole time,” Tony says. “I didn’t believe him, because that would be _crazy_ , but then I watched the footage, and sure enough. You are aware that it’s been three days?” 

“I know,” Steve says calmly. 

"I could post a picture of this and make a thousand ORAs cry.” 

Steve shrugs. 

“Seriously. Is this some kind of old-fashioned ritual I don’t know about? Is this what you guys did back in the thirties, instead of having actual sex?” 

“People had sex in the thirties, Tony,” Steve says wryly. 

“Gross."

Steve shrugs. 

Tony stares back, visibly annoyed, and then he huffs and drops to the floor beside Steve. 

Steve sets aside the tablet he’d been working off of, and the file folder he’d been annotating from it. 

Tony rests his forearms on his knees, and chews his lip. 

“Nope,” he says eventually. “I don’t get it. Can’t hear anything, can’t smell anything. We’re sitting _under_ the window—which is set to be opaque anyway—and we’re staring at the wrong wall. And my butt hurts already.” 

“Well, you’ve got a bony butt,” Steve says, and grins at the noise of outrage. 

But he can’t explain it to Tony, really. 

Bucky is on the other side of this wall, in a containment chamber meant for the Hulk, riding out his rut all alone. He went in three days ago, sweating, grabbing, and just before their hands had slid free of each other Bucky had stared at him with wide, terrified blue eyes and said, “ _Steve_ ,” and it had taken every last fiber of resolve Steve had to close the door on him. 

Steve has been out here ever since. 

He couldn’t have explained it in words, how he _needs_ to be here. He’s aware that it makes no sense. Bucky doesn’t belong to him, not like he once did, and in this containment cell he’s probably the safest he’s ever been in his entire life. His rut will be painful, but he’ll get through it. But every time Steve steps away from the door to Bucky’s cell, his heart starts to pound and every cell in his body screams to _go back, go back, go back._

The only time the world feels right is when he’s here, sitting here on the ground, back pressed to the wall that contains his Alpha. This is where he belongs. An army could come crashing through, and he would bare his teeth and plant his feet on the ground, and kill anyone who tried to move him. 

It’s animalistic. Primal. 

He _has_ to be here. 

“So how long is this gonna take, anyway?” Tony asks, squirming into a new position. 

“Dunno,” Steve says, shrugging one shoulder. “It used to be four days, but the serum… enhances things. At least a week, probably.” 

Tony whistles. “Damn.” 

Steve doesn’t have a reply. 

“You know, I’m pretty sure that room over there is just storage. I can have them stick a cot in there, if you’re really determined to sit here and self-flagellate for the next four days.” 

“I’m not here to sleep,” Steve replies. 

“Just sit in the hallway for a week straight like a sad sack?” 

“It’s peaceful down here.” 

“What about a sleeping bag? A pillow? One of those little airplane neck things that people who fly coach have to use?” 

“I’m good, Tony. Really.” 

Tony heaves a sigh of great frustration. “You need so much therapy, I swear to God.” 

“Probably,” Steve agrees peaceably.

Tony is quiet for an astonishing thirty seconds, while he recrosses his legs and wiggles closer to the wall. He settles for exactly ten seconds, and then he says, "You really love this guy, huh?" 

Steve looks over at him, sarcasm at the ready, but something in Tony's expression stays his tongue. 

He really wants to know. 

So Steve stops, and tries to find a way to answer that will encompass how much he feels for Bucky. How he loved him over miles and years and a thousand days where he woke up knowing that he was _dead_ , but now he's here, he's alive, and how some days Steve still can't believe it's real. How _love_ feels too small a word for the enormity of what rises in his chest when he thinks of Bucky. 

But he finds himself unequal to the task of somehow voicing it aloud. Words have never really been his strong suit. 

So instead he reaches for his phone, pulls off the otterbox case, and removes the photo that's tucked inside. It's slightly battered from its travels around Eastern Europe, returned to him just before Bucky had disappeared into the containment cell, and he's been keeping it safe ever since. He's stared at it so many times over the past few years that the image is permanently imprinted in his brain, but the sight of their younger selves still makes his breath catch a little. 

He takes in a breath, and hands the photo over. 

"That was our wedding day," Steve tells him. "1937."

"That's _you?_ " 

"Yep." 

"Holy shit, you were tiny." 

Steve breathes through that one. "Yeah. Serum gave me an extra foot and a hundred pounds. It was a rough adjustment." 

"Hang on," Tony says, squinting. "Steve. Is that a _collar?_ " 

Oh. Right. 

So far, Tony’s the only person to have noticed. But then again, he’s never shown this photo to another Omega before, so maybe that makes sense. 

The weight of his dog tags against his chest is suddenly heavier with his next breath. 

“It was normal, back then,” Steve says. 

“Yeah, but—” Tony makes a face. “A fucking _collar?_ I thought those died out in like, Victorian times. I can’t believe they made you wear one.” 

“They didn’t _make_ me,” Steve protests. “It was…” 

“What, you liked it?”

“No,” Steve admits. “Not really. I felt like a dog.” 

“Yeah, no shit.” 

“But it wasn’t so bad, either. I didn’t wear it all the time—most people didn’t. Just for church, or a wedding or something like that.” 

“Right. So everyone knew you were already claimed goods.” 

“It used to mean protection. Back then, rape wasn’t… I know it’s not perfect today, but when I was growing up, rape wasn’t a crime you could really commit. Especially not with Omegas. So if you had your collar, you were safe.” He pauses. “Safer.” 

"Huh," Tony says, unconvinced. “I guess.”

"But it was obviously also used to dominate and abuse Omegas, too. I think it's good, that we've gotten rid of them. Rings make a lot more sense. They’re a lot… fairer.” 

“You don’t say,” Tony says. 

Steve doesn’t reply. His eyes drift back to the photo in Tony’s hand, like a moth to a flame. He wonders if Bucky remembers this day. If this photograph is the condensation of a memory, the way it is for Steve, or if it’s something else—a visage of a life Bucky can’t remember being part of. A riddle, stared at again and again but never solved. 

"So, listen,” Tony says, nudging Steve in the side. 

Steve looks over at him. 

Tony cups his hands in the air, with a wicked look on his face. “Are we talking apple or grapefruit here?” 

Steve goes bright red. 

“ _Tony_.” 

“Come on. Look at this guy. Nobody looks that confident unless they’ve got a Pringles can between their legs—” 

Steve chokes. 

“—so the knot’s gotta be at least proportional—” 

_“Give me that.”_

Tony surrenders the photo, hooting with laughter, and Steve tucks it protectively back into his phone case. 

“Come _on_ , Rogers. Omega to Omega. Dish,” Tony cajoles. 

Steve is still blushing furiously. “It’s not a _Pringles can_ ,” he mutters, eventually.

“Once you pop, the fun don’t stop?” 

Steve is never going to be able to eat Pringles again. “Please stop.” 

Tony cackles.

  
  


On day six, Natasha appears. 

Steve blinks at her like he’s coming up from underwater. 

“Well, this is healthy,” she remarks. 

Steve waves at her halfheartedly, and the heaviness in his right leg tells him he hasn’t moved in a while. After so many days outside of Bucky’s room, he’s taken to routinely stretching himself out, or taking exercise breaks, or lately, even short naps, but mostly he sits and sinks into his own mind. Bruce has dropped by twice, and tells him that meditation is good for the soul, but perhaps better practiced in moderation. 

Steve has been without Bucky for three years, now, so in his opinion, moderation can get fucked. 

Natasha sets a white plastic bag in front of him that smells strongly of Chinese food, and Steve sits up straighter and re-crosses his legs into a new position. 

“Really,” Natasha says. “Do you know how fucked up you have to be for _Tony Stark_ to start making calls for an intervention?” 

“Please don’t let him stage an intervention,” Steve sighs. 

Natasha smiles without humor. “Too late. Hi, I’m your intervention.” 

“Well, you know you’re pretty fucked up if they send Black Widow to stage your intervention,” Steve says drily. 

“You’re lucky it wasn’t Sam. He wanted to bring you blankets and tea and a twelve-step recovery plan.” 

“I’ll take beef and broccoli instead,” Steve replies, and starts pulling cartons out of the bag. 

Natasha doesn’t say anything after that, but takes her portion of the food, and cracks apart two pairs of chopsticks. She’s gotten all of Steve’s favorites.

She gives him a reprieve until after they eat, and after they’ve both split open their fortunes and crunched through the cookies, and after Steve has neatly stacked the empty cartons and replaced them in the bag they came in. 

“Sarajevo can only wait for so long,” Natasha says quietly. 

Steve winces at that, though he knows it’s true. “It can wait a few more days.” 

“And what if this needs more than a few more days, too?” Natasha asks, nodding at the door behind Steve. 

“Then...” Steve starts, but he doesn’t know the answer. 

Or rather, he does, and he doesn’t want to admit that Bucky would win over that, too. His selfishness knows no bounds. 

“Steve,” Natasha says, with a look on her face like she knows what he’s thinking. 

Steve ties the handles of the bag in a square knot. 

“Tell me what’s going on,” she prompts. “ _Really_ going on.” 

He looks over at her, and her perfectly blank face. 

She’s waiting, but she’s not demanding, and she’s not in a hurry. She’s not here to judge. 

Natasha is the best interrogator they have, and Steve has watched her in action enough to know that she has a host of techniques at her disposal. This is one of them. But if she had to do this, then Steve is glad that this is the approach she’s chosen. He likes to think it’s because she respects him enough to be straightforward. 

“I can’t leave him,” Steve tells her, honest in kind.

“Why not?” Natasha asks. 

Steve doesn’t have the words to answer, but Natasha doesn’t change her question. She just waits expectantly. 

“Because,” Steve says, eventually, around the glass in his throat, “when this is over, he’s going to leave _me_.” 

The sympathy on Natasha’s face is terrible. “Steve,” she says. 

“I know it’s stupid,” Steve says, and his voice cracks on the word ‘stupid’. 

“It’s not.” 

“Yes, it is. I’m not doing anything for him, right now. He doesn’t even know I’m here. But I think about getting up to leave, and—and I think of a million ways HYDRA could sneak in and grab him, and I’d never see him again. Or him coming out and thinking that I abandoned him, or just coming back and finding him _gone_ . I can’t leave him, Nat, I tried and I _can’t_.” 

He has to close his eyes, and inhale and count to seven. 

There’s a hand on his back, and Natasha’s fingernails press into his skin. 

Steve thinks about hundreds of letters drawn there, but by different hands, a lifetime ago, and he feels like his chest is going to split in two. 

“Okay,” Natasha says softly. “Okay.” 

  
  


Bucky emerges from the cell the following night, somewhere in the wee hours of the morning. 

Steve comes out his light doze the instant he hears the locks shifting behind him, and by the time Bucky swings the door open Steve has scrambled to his feet. 

Bucky stares at him, surprised. 

“Hi,” Steve says. 

“Hi,” Bucky replies, and his eyes go to the sit pad on the ground, and its surrounding detritus—the tablet, the water bottle, the bag of gummy bears. He looks back up at Steve, and nods. “Smart.” 

Steve is confused for half a second, and then he realizes that Bucky thinks Steve was there to guard him. As an _enemy_. 

“No!” Steve says quickly. “No, God, Bucky I wasn’t—that wasn’t what I was doing. You’re not a _prisoner_.” 

Bucky looks at him skeptically. 

“I was just… worried about you,” Steve explains. The words are inadequate. “I didn’t want to leave you here alone. Everyone thought I was crazy.” 

Bucky shrugs one shoulder. 

“Yeah, okay, funny guy.”

Bucky’s mouth twitches. 

“Come on,” Steve says, bending to gather his things. “Let’s go back up to my place. You look awful. You can shower, and eat something, and in the morning, we—” He pauses. “We’ll figure it out.” 

“‘Kay,” Bucky says hoarsely. 

Steve starts off down the hall. 

“The hell’d you do?” Bucky rasps. 

“What?” 

Bucky grunts, and gestures at the leg Steve is currently limping on. 

“Oh,” Steve says, and gives him a sheepish grin. “Fell asleep. All pins and needles, now.” 

“Idiot,” Bucky says, and Steve’s heart has never been more warmed by an insult. 

  
  


Back in the apartment, Bucky goes straight for the shower. Steve throws his fluffiest towels into the dryer to heat them up, aware that he is ‘being extra’, and not giving a single, solitary shit. Bucky deserves warm, fluffy towels, so he'll have them. 

After he drops the warmed towels in the bathroom, along with the comfiest sweats he owns, Steve turns to the kitchen. He finds it unhelpfully barren, so he settles instead for one of his favorite twenty-first century inventions: grilled peanut butter and banana sandwiches. He uses up an entire loaf of bread, and by the time Bucky appears in the living room Steve’s already eaten two. 

Bucky moves like he’s expecting to step on a landmine, and it takes a lot of effort to not watch his journey from the entryway to the couch. Steve focuses on taking small, even bites of his sandwich, and eventually feels Bucky’s weight settle gingerly next to him. He smells like tea tree oil and peppermint. 

Bucky chose to sit on Steve’s right side. Does he remember, that Steve used to be deaf in his left ear? Or does he just remember that this is the side he always sits on? 

Or does he not remember at all?

They eat in silence. 

A thousand questions sit at the tip of Steve's tongue, but every single one of them is a pathway to a broken heart, and he doesn't dare ruin this. He is here, with his Alpha, and they are both healthy and safe and warm and fed. He wants to savor this as long as he can. 

He's full after five sandwiches, but eats a sixth anyway, nibble by nibble, and watches Bucky plow through the rest with a growing sense of dread as the pile gets smaller and smaller. As Bucky gets closer and closer to leaving. 

But when the last sandwich is gone, Bucky sits back, and the room is quiet. Outside, the sky is turning a watery gray with the dawn, and yellow lines of taxi cabs are beginning to flood the streets. 

It's okay, Steve tells himself. Bucky will leave, and Steve will stay here, and he’ll work through the hurt once again. He’s survived it before. He should be grateful for the time he's had. He has Sam, and Natasha, now. He won’t be alone. He’ll be _fine_. 

But then Bucky says, "So where'm I sleepin'?" 

So he's not leaving. 

...Not yet.

  
  


Two days later, Steve wakes up, and Bucky is gone. 

He checks every room in the apartment twice, but he’s not there. His boots and coat are gone. There’s no note. 

Steve has spent the last forty-eight hours waiting for this, but his chest still feels like it’s been cracked open. His lungs expand, but no air comes in. 

Bucky is gone. 

He’s left. He _chose_ to leave. 

Steve sits at the kitchen table, staring at the wall, and longing for the days when he was fresh out of the ice and the grief was too all-encompassing to feel like a real emotion. 

It had been easier, when he’d thought Bucky was just dead. Steve had been alone, his mate had been dead, and he’d made his peace with that. Or started to, at least. It was the worst thing Steve had ever been through, mourning the loss of his Alpha, but it had been a simple, raw grief. Bucky had died, and Steve had not. 

But this. 

This is so much _worse_. 

To know that Bucky is out there, alive, but that he doesn’t need Steve the way Steve needs him—to know that Bucky remembers him but doesn’t _want him_ —it’s a grief cut with resentment and anger and jealousy, and Steve hates himself for feeling it, but he can’t seem to stop. He tells himself that he has no right to feel angry at Bucky for how he chooses to recover from his own trauma. 

He doesn’t know how many times he can go through this. 

He hates that he isn’t enough.

What’s he going to do if Bucky comes back for another rut? 

What if Bucky _doesn’t_ come back? 

Steve hadn’t actually helped him. Bucky had asked for medication to stop the rut, not just a prison cell to hide in. Steve had failed him. Why would he come back?

But what if HYDRA captures him again? 

God, what if HYDRA _kills him?_

Steve can’t mourn him, not again, the first time had nearly _killed_ him— 

“Steve?” 

Bucky is standing in the entry to the kitchen, holding a white plastic bag with a yellow smiley face on it. He’s looking at Steve in confusion. 

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve says. 

Bucky sets the bag on the table. “You’re breathing too fast,” he announces. 

“I thought—” Steve stops himself, as it flashes in his mind _don’t give him ideas_ and _don’t piss him off_ and _don’t make him feel guilty if he chooses to go_. “Nothing. Sorry. I’m okay. You—you got breakfast?” 

“Bagels,” Bucky says. “With no goddamn raisins.”

“Oh. Okay.” 

Bucky slides a chair out silently, and sits down with a grace that’s still strange to watch. All his movements are like that—deliberate, and fluid. Before he fell, Bucky had moved with casual expanse, dropping into chairs, slinging his arm around the back of the couch, spreading his legs wide when he sat. HYDRA trained that out of him. He sits now with silent, perfect posture as he unties the takeout bag, and removes a brown paper bag from within. 

“Breathe slower,” Bucky orders, scowling. 

Steve can’t help the little huff of laughter, half-hysterical as it is. He splays his hands flat on the table, and takes in a deep, slow breath. 

He thinks his heartbeat has slowed down a little, at least. 

A bagel is shoved in his direction, piled with lox and cream cheese and capers. Steve eats it without tasting a single bite. 

“You thought I left,” Bucky says, some time later. “That’s why you were sad. Because you thought I left.”

Steve feels abruptly nauseous. “Yes,” he says, and swallows. 

Bucky nods, and then, after a long moment, he says in a heavier voice, “You know HYDRA is still out there.” 

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. 

“I raided every base I knew about,” Bucky continues, staring at the table. “I killed every single agent I found. I—I _tried_. But. Every time I think it’s done, there’s something else that comes up.” 

“You’re one person, Bucky,” Steve says. “HYDRA is a global terrorist organization that entire _countries_ have tried to destroy.” 

“There’s a bank in Saaremaa; their ledgers don’t match up,” Bucky says dully. “And there’s missing girls in Saratov who all made deposits there. There’s a physicist in Bratsk whose Omega gets a monthly payment from an account there. There’s a CEO in Oslo who opens a new safety deposit box there every six months. And he has another bank in Gothenburg, and their ledges don’t match up, either, and—God, Steve, it just keeps _going_.” 

“I know,” Steve tells him. “Believe me, I know.” 

Bucky exhales, and his shoulders slump. He looks up at Steve with exhausted eyes. “I don’t want to do it anymore.” 

“Then don’t,” Steve says. 

“Someone has to.” 

“There’s a lot of someones already working on it.” 

“I don’t _deserve—_ ” 

“Yes, you do,” Steve says. 

“You don’t know that. You don’t even know who I am, anymore.” 

“I know who you were, and I know what HYDRA made you do, and I know that you deserve to come home, for the same reason that you knew you had to pull me out of that river last year.” Steve feels tears rising, but he swallows them down. He curls his hands into fists under the table, fighting against the urge to take Bucky’s hands into his own. “You and me, Bucky, we’re… God, we’re in each others’ _bones_. All the HYDRA scientists in the world couldn’t take that out of you, and I know I don’t know you, not like I used to, but I _want_ to. I want to learn you again. I want to love you again. Just—just stay. Please stay.” 

An eternity passes, and Bucky closes his eyes. “Okay,” he whispers. He breathes in, and breathes out, long and slow. “Okay.” 

  
  


Two days later, and Sarajevo cannot wait any longer. 

“It’s a mission,” Steve explains, over a dinner of hand-pulled noodles. “I put it off as long as I could, but I gotta go tonight or I'll miss my window.” 

Bucky doesn’t look up from where he’s slicing up the noodles into tiny, tiny bites with his fork and knife. 

“I swear I wouldn’t leave if it wasn’t important,” Steve adds miserably. 

“It’s fine,” Bucky tells his noodles.

“You’ll be safe, here,” Steve promises. “The Tower has some of the best security in the world, and if you need anything JARVIS can get it for you, or Tony, and I won’t have my cell phone but—” 

“I’m not a fucking five year old,” Bucky snaps. 

It hurts, but Steve swallows it down. “I just want you to be okay,” he says. 

Bucky laughs darkly. “You’re in for a long wait, then.” 

“That wasn’t what I meant.” 

“Go on your fucking mission,” Bucky says shortly. “I’ll survive. I lasted seventy years without you, I think I’ll make it a few more days.” 

Steve flinches, and looks down at his food. 

They finish their dinner in silence. 

  
  


Steve changes into his tactical gear, and then sits down at his desk to review the building schematics one last time. He’ll do it again once he has the quinjet on autopilot, just to be safe, but he wants to make sure he knows exactly what weapons he needs to grab from the armory before he leaves. He has no quartermaster to outfit him, just has he has no CO to report to, and no intelligence team to assemble tidy little briefings for him. Every piece of this mission belongs to Steve. 

He’s debating between a sonic and spring-loaded center punch to get through the basement window—one has more power, but the other is quieter, and Steve hasn’t been able to find the thickness of the glass in _any_ of the schematics—when a shadow under his bedroom door catches his eye. 

Steve freezes, but there’s nothing to hear. The apartment is absolutely silent. 

The shadow stays for a long moment, and then moves away. 

  
  


In Sarajevo, Steve carries no shield, and he wears no stars. 

He pulls a man from his prison cell and steals him out into the night, and as they drive out into the countryside, the man weeps openly. “ _Hvala vam_ ,” he says, over and over again, like a prayer. “ _Hvala vam, hvala vam, hvala vam_.” 

He must not remember the face of the man who put him in prison in the first place. 

  
  


Steve wakes up, but for several seconds he’s still drowning, he can’t breathe, his lungs burn, his limbs are water-logged and ice-shocked and the world is dark, dark, dark— 

But, no. 

He’s in his bedroom. 

He’s not drowning, he’s in his bedroom, and he’s warm, and he can breathe, he just has to coordinate his muscles and pull the air in, and his lungs will open up. Yes. Okay. Again. Breathe in, and breathe out. He’s okay. There is no ice. 

Several minutes later, he can breathe, the tremors have stopped, but his mind won’t stop replaying the memory of it over and over again, so he gets up. 

It’s two in the morning, but Bucky is in the living room anyway, standing at the windows and looking out into the night. 

Steve flicks on a lamp, and collapses onto the couch with his mug of tea. 

He wonders what Bucky is looking at, and after he gets through half his mug without Bucky moving from his spot, Steve voices the question. 

“Too many high-rises,” Bucky complains. 

“You should see the thing they just finished building up on Park Avenue,” Steve says mildly. 

“There are a hundred and forty-seven spots that someone could line up a shot from and kill me right here,” Bucky says. 

“It’s Tony. The glass is bulletproof about four times over.” 

“Do you know how convenient floor-to-ceiling windows are, to a sniper?” 

Steve rolls his eyes. “So move away from the windows, genius.” 

Bucky makes a disgusted little noise, but steps back, and then yanks on the cord that sends the heavy black-out curtains sweeping across them. He looks around the room sourly for a moment, then exhales and sits down on the opposite end of the couch. 

“It’s going to be okay,” Steve tells him. 

Bucky doesn’t reply. 

“It’s just for an hour, and if you don’t like her, we’ll find someone else. Tony has probably seen at least a dozen, himself.” 

Still nothing. 

“Maybe Dr. Thompson hates modern architecture, too,” Steve offers. 

“She lives in that glass monstrosity down in Astor Place,” Bucky says darkly. “And she has a painting _of the Guggenheim_ in her living room.” 

“Did you—Bucky, did you _case_ your therapist?” Steve demands. 

Bucky gives him a look that says, on a very spiritual level, _Obviously_. 

“You can’t do that! It’s an invasion of her privacy!” 

“Maybe she should rethink those floor-to-ceiling windows.” 

“Jesus Christ, Buck.” 

Bucky is unrepentant. 

Steve really hopes this therapist is as good as Tony says she is. There’s a short list of people who have the clearance to even begin to help someone like Bucky, and probably an even shorter list of people who would pass Bucky’s scrutinization. 

But it’s been almost a month since Bucky first came to the Tower, and he has good days, and bad days, and days where he doesn’t leave his room at all. Steve knows he gets up every few hours in the night just to double-check the locks, and sometimes he tears the entire apartment apart looking for hidden cameras, and sometimes he gets overwhelmed and in a haze of panic he yanks at his hair again and again like if he could just rip it all out then maybe the brain underneath it would finally _shut up_. 

And more than once Steve has found him standing, staring aimlessly, and when Steve says his name Bucky replies with, “ _Ready to comply_.” 

So, therapy it is. 

If they can find one that Bucky deems acceptable. 

  
  


Twice a week, Steve travels to the Lower East Side to Resistance, a small martial arts studio tucked between a nail salon and an Insomnia Cookies. On his way is the statue of Captain America, whose location is currently a hotly contested issue in New York City ever since it became known that said national icon was actually born and raised in Brooklyn Heights. Steve is not personally a fan of the statue, and wouldn’t mind not having to pass it every Monday and Saturday, but he also dislikes the thought of having it anywhere near where he really grew up. 

After Steve had announced to the world that he was an Omega, amidst quite a lot of hate mail and interview requests, he’d also been inundated with invitations to support a staggering number of Omega organizations and political groups—everything from joining lobbyists on Capitol Hill, to giving a commencement address at an all-Omega college in Massachusetts. 

“You can’t do them all, Steve,” Pepper had told him, after Steve spent an entire afternoon trying to figure out why Omegas in Science and O.S.T.E.M. seemed to spend so much time sabotaging each other, when they were fighting for the _exact same cause_. “You have to pick two or three, and the rest will have to find another famous Omega to take advantage of.” 

Resistance had made the short list. They were a small non-profit dedicated to self-defence classes for Omegas, and while they’d initially just asked for a retweet or a shout-out, what they’d gotten instead was a part-time instructor. 

When he’s not on a mission, Steve spends Monday nights and Saturday mornings running drills with Omegas on how to escape headlocks and bearhugs, how to fight with their keys as a weapon, and how to break a nose with the heel of their hand. Steve is larger than most of his students by a wide margin, and he’s happy to let every single one of them take him down again and again until they feel confident in their skills. 

Steve doesn’t really care to examine the deeper workings of why he finds this so fulfilling. He knows there are layers of trauma embedded in the self-satisfaction that he leaves every class with, and he doesn’t care. 

It’s one of the only things Steve has done in the twenty-first century that actually feels like it has _meaning_. 

  
  


It hadn’t been long before Bucky had tired of living off of takeout, and had summarily taken over kitchen duties. He’s a lot better at it than Steve remembers him being back before the war, but then again, in 1942, milk and butter had been splurge purchases on their meager budget, and the cuisine of the time had been predominantly… boiled. 

Tonight, they eat shrimp paella on the couch, because Steve is prepping for a deposition tomorrow, and Bucky discovered Planet Earth earlier today on Netflix and wants to get to the _Jungles_ episode. 

Not every day is this easy, but Steve treasures the quiet domesticity of it all. He hadn’t appreciated it, back before the war. He hadn’t appreciated a _lot_ of things before the war. 

“This is _amazing_ ,” Steve informs Bucky, two bites in. 

“You say that every night,” Bucky grumbles. 

“There’s more, right?” Steve asks, digging his spoon in again. 

“Obviously. You don’t want to know how much eight pounds of shrimp cost, either.” 

Steve has some idea. 

But Steve had spent the first twenty-seven years of his life constantly hungry, and one of the best things about this new century is that he can finally have _enough_. Better still, Steve is happy to see that weeks of regular meals have finally gotten rid of the dangerous cut of Bucky’s cheekbones. And if it costs him a hundred bucks in shrimp, then… well. Then that’s what it costs. 

After dinner, and after David Attenborough finishes narrating about the sociopolitical economics of a chimpanzee troop in Uganda, Steve pulls the tablet out and buries himself in old op reports. It’s a closed court tomorrow, just himself and the lawyers, and the entire case is sealed from the public eye as a matter of national security, which he’s grateful for. Trials seem to be even more of a three-ringed circus than they were back in the forties. 

He’s so intent on his review of the op timeline that when he looks up, he has no idea what’s been playing on the television for the last thirty minutes. 

The sight of icebergs in the Arctic greets him in high-definition. 

Steve freezes. 

For an instant—just an instant—he’s in the plane again, going down, foolishly thinking that it won’t hurt to die, that it’ll be quick, that the serum doesn’t stand a chance against the crush of metal and fuel into the icy waters of the Arctic. 

A hand on his arm startles him out of it, and when Steve turns to look, there’s Bucky. 

_Touching him_. 

Steve looks down before he thinks better of it, and it’s just in time to see Bucky’s hand pull back like he’s been burnt. 

“Sorry,” Bucky mutters. 

“No,” Steve says hastily. “No, it’s okay. I’m sorry. I was just surprised.” 

Bucky looks at him warily. “We don’t touch.” 

Steve swallows. “You can touch me, Buck. If you want.” 

“But—” Bucky frowns, and his eyes go unfocused, like he’s trying to remember something. 

“I’ll tell you, if I want you to stop,” Steve adds. 

He wants to put Bucky’s hand back. He wants Bucky’s arm around his shoulders and their bodies pressed together, and his head tipped onto Bucky’s shoulder and the scent of him everywhere—he wants it so badly it’s almost a physical ache. 

But Bucky puts his hand back in his lap, and leaves it there. He doesn’t touch Steve again. 

  
  


Steve wakes with an itch under his skin that happens, sometimes, when the bed is too soft and the air is too still. It's been three years, so by this point he knows to just roll out of bed and start doing push-ups. Exercise is mindless, and the burn of his muscles grounds him the way few other things do.

An hour later, sweaty and clear-headed, Steve wanders out into the kitchen to grab a water and a protein bar before his shower. Bucky is playing solitaire at the table, which probably means his insomnia’s been acting up again, though when he looks up his expression is peaceful, so maybe he’d just woken up with the inexplicable urge to play cards. 

“Morning,” Steve says, moving into the kitchen. 

There’s the briefest falter in his step as he passes by Bucky’s chair, when it springs into his mind that he could so easily stop and press a kiss to the top of his head—a split second decision of _it would be so easy, he wouldn’t mind, but what if he hates it, don’t ruin this morning it just started_ —and in the end he keeps walking. 

Behind him, he hears Bucky rise out of his chair. 

Steve opens the fridge, grabs a water bottle, and as he shuts the door he looks up to see Bucky standing in front of him. 

“You want one?” Steve asks, offering the bottle. 

But Bucky’s eyes are fixed lower. On Steve’s chest. 

On his dog tags, which had spilled out during one exercise or another, and now rest on top of Steve’s t-shirt, plain to see. 

“Oh,” Steve says, and for once he doesn’t feel the flash of possessiveness that he usually does when he catches other people staring. “Yeah. You remember these?” 

He holds them out, and after a long moment, Bucky cups them in the palm of his hand. 

“I was still wearing them, when they found me,” Steve says quietly. “Never took ‘em off. Not once.” 

“I had a key,” Bucky says, eventually. 

“Yeah.” 

Bucky frowns, thumb brushing the padlock with infinite tenderness. “I lost it.” 

“You were wearing it, when you fell,” Steve says. 

“134 Henry Street, Apartment 3, Brooklyn, New York 11201,” Bucky murmurs. He looks up and meets Steve’s eyes. 

“Yeah. We used to live there.” 

Bucky stares down at the padlock again. Eventually, he says in a very soft voice, “You were wearing this when you died.” 

Steve swallows. 

“I held it in my hand,” he says gently, and he closes his hand around Bucky’s, folding it into a fist around the dog tags, and then pushing it gently until it rests against Bucky’s chest. “Just like this.”

How funny, that Steve had thought Bucky was dead, and took less than a week to chase down death himself. That he’d woken up, alone, and spent the better part of two years wishing he were dead. And now here he is, still alive, and Bucky is alive, and they’re together again despite all the odds. He’s so goddamn lucky. Steve thanks God every day that he’d survived that ice, that he’d managed to make it to 2015 alive and healthy, to be here with Bucky now. 

Part of him wonders if Bucky feels the same way. If he’s glad that he survived all of his suffering at the hands of HYDRA so that he could be here with Steve, now. 

Or does he wish that he’d died in that ravine? 

Steve doesn’t know for sure, but more and more, he finds himself thinking that Bucky is just as grateful to be here as Steve is. 

  
  


Steve has a general sense that Bucky remembers most of their life together, but he’s never sat down and ran through an exhaustive timeline. What’s important is that Bucky knows that he was loved, and _is_ loved, and the rest is just details. 

There are definitely still holes that are being filled in, though. 

When Bucky decides to experiment with homemade pesto, he squints at the roasting pine nuts and says, “...Did we ever try to use your shield as a frying pan?” 

And Steve bursts out laughing at the sudden memory of seven starving Commandos crouched around a fire, cracking stolen eggs over a shield that wouldn’t heat, no matter how long they held it over the flames. 

Or when Steve reaches for a kolache and Bucky bats his hand away and snaps, “That one’s apple,” and then blinks in confusion for a few seconds until the memory of Steve’s old allergy slots into place. 

Or when Steve is buried in his tablet again, and Bucky appears in his bedroom door, wide-eyed and pale. Steve immediately sets down his work and stands up from his desk, crossing the room in three strides, and Bucky whispers, “You were pregnant, once,” and Steve almost freezes on the spot. 

“Yeah,” he says, eventually. It’s an old hurt, trivial in comparison to the other things that have happened to them since, but he still remembers being nineteen and devastated, sick with guilt. 

“I don’t remember what happened,” Bucky says, distressed. “I remember—I remember bein’ so excited about it, but I don’t remember what _happened_.” 

“I lost it,” Steve tells him softly. He hesitates, but Bucky looks so upset that he decides he doesn’t care, and he grabs Bucky’s hands in his and squeezes them tight, metal and flesh alike. “I was still real sick back then. I didn’t make it more than a few months.” 

“I don’t remember,” Bucky repeats. 

“It’s okay,” Steve says, squeezing his hands. “You don’t have to remember.” 

“But I _want_ to,” Bucky says, frustrated. “Steve, I’ve got—you don’t even know how many things I wish I could fucking _forget_ , but the one thing I actually _want_ to remember and my fucking useless swiss cheese brain—” 

“Hey, no, don’t—” 

“—I fucking hate this, I hate it, it’s not _fair_ —” 

“I know—” 

“It’s not—why—I—fuck, I— _fuck_ —” 

“—Bucky, shh, it’s—”

 _“FUCK,"_ Bucky yells, and yanks his hands free, reaching up to pull at his hair, swearing over and over again, “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” and Steve grabs his wrists but Bucky jerks them away and they struggle for a moment, Steve insisting, “Stop it—don’t—Bucky, _stop_ —” and Bucky’s breathing going faster and faster, his hands fighting for freedom— 

“Bucky, please, you’re—” 

“ _—fuck fuck fuck_ —” 

“—stop it—” 

“— _fuckfuck—”_

 _"Stop hurting yourself!”_ Steve screams, and with an almighty shove he pins Bucky to the wall. 

Bucky goes still. 

They stand there, panting, silent. They are pressed body to body, forehead to forehead. 

“Please,” Steve begs, holding Bucky’s wrists in a vice grip. “Please don’t hurt yourself.” 

Bucky shudders against him, and nods. 

“Okay,” Steve says softly, pressing his body against Bucky’s and feeling every tremor. “Okay, okay, okay. You’re okay.” And he keeps saying it, over and over, until Bucky goes quiet against him. 

  
  


“That was stupid,” Natasha announces. 

Steve hobbles down the ramp of the cargo plane, broken ankle protesting with every step, a flash of sharp agony that only momentarily overshadows the constant throb of his left hand, his shoulder, his hip, his head… His entire body is one giant ache. The tylenol from the paltry first aid kit Corporal Chow had offered him has not done much to help. 

“When I agreed to help you, Rogers, this was not what I _meant_.” 

“Nat,” Steve says tiredly. 

“Give me that,” Natasha snaps, unbuckling his tac vest efficiently. 

“Hey!” 

“Shut up,” Natasha says, neatly divesting him of his entire arsenal of weapons in a minute flat. “You’ll walk faster without it, and I get hives if I’m around the military for too long. Let’s go.” 

Steve moves maybe one tenth of a mile faster without his gear, but he knows better than to point this out. Natasha’s kindness often comes in disguise.

This is only further enforced when they emerge from the hanger, and Natasha snaps at him to wait there for her before she strides across the road in the direction of the parking lot. 

Steve all but collapses against the hanger wall, all his weight on his uninjured leg, and basks in the afternoon sun. The plane had been cold and silent, and it’s a relief to stand in the June sunshine, hear birds chirp and feel the heaviness in the air that comes from standing near a forest on a hot day. There’s no dust in the air like the deserts of Kazakhstan. 

It isn’t until he hears a horn honk that Steve realizes his eyes had closed, and he’d started to drift off. He opens them to find Natasha waiting in front of him in a red Audi that looks badly out of place against the military base backdrop. 

Steve limps over to the passenger side, and with careful movements and an occasional swear word, he eventually manages to load himself into the car. 

Natasha doesn’t speak until they’ve exited the compound. 

“You can’t do this again,” she says. 

"Can we please not do this now?" Steve asks, without much hope. 

"Maybe when you don't hare off to Europe and almost get yourself killed on a whim—" 

“It was the _right thing to do_ ,” Steve snaps. 

Natasha looks over at him. “It wasn’t your job to do it.” 

“You don’t get to make that decision.” 

“I do when you call me at midnight, half-dead and stranded in the desert for a mission that was _completely unnecessary_.” 

Steve takes in a deep breath, and tells himself not to lose his temper. “I had to _try_ , Natasha. No one was going to pay that ransom for her, and her government wasn’t going to step in to save her. Not after what we did.” 

“Not after what _she_ did.” 

“We killed her Alpha. For _HYDRA_. They told us that he was the enemy and we murdered him in cold blood, planted evidence that he was working with drug runners, and then flew off on his goddamn private plane and congratulated ourselves on a job well done. We didn’t even think about what it would do to his family.” 

“We didn’t know it was fake evidence,” Natasha says steadily. “SHIELD told us we were exposing the truth by leaving that flash drive there, and we had no way of knowing any different.” 

“It doesn’t matter what we _thought_ —” 

“And what’s more,” Natasha continues, “is that even if it was our fault, what we did under bad intel, it was that girl’s choice to start making deals with those drug runners, after her Alpha died. That had _nothing_ to do with what we did.” 

“We killed her Alpha, and then we went and destroyed his reputation. She was grieving, and she was scared. She was _alone_.” 

“So she had no choice but to go and fund a cartel? Steve, that’s bullshit and you know it.” 

“She made a mistake—” 

“She made a _choice_.” 

“So she deserved to die?” 

“Steve, you can only take responsibility for so much!” 

“You don’t understand,” Steve says, shaking his head. “You don’t get it, what it’s like to lose your mate, to lose _everything_ like that. She was out of her mind with grief.” 

Natasha takes in a deep breath. “Look. I know you empathize with her. But you were out of your mind with grief, too, and you didn’t go and subsidize the heroin industry.” 

“No, I just joined a paramilitary organization and shot whoever they told me to without question,” Steve says bitterly. 

Natasha is silent. 

“I owed it to her,” Steve says. “She didn’t deserve to die.” 

“And yet she did. Hours before you got there,” Natasha says flatly. 

Steve flinches. 

“You can’t save everyone, Steve, and it’s not your _job_ to. You went running halfway around the world for an Omega that you widowed two years ago, who spent _two years_ making her own choices and settling deeper and deeper into debt with the wrong people, and you came flying in, ready to die for her.” 

“I was just trying to _help_ ,” Steve says, voice raw. “It wasn’t—I wasn’t—God. Natasha, do you know what they _did_ to her before they killed her?” 

“And if you died out there in the desert, how do you think Barnes would feel about it?” 

Steve goes stiff. “Don’t.” 

“How do you think that would go over with him? You think it might slow down his recovery a bit? You think he might be _a little sad_ if you died?” 

“Don’t you dare use him against me like that,” Steve breathes, furious. “Don’t you fucking dare.” 

“Well, of the two of you, he’s the only one who seems to give a shit whether you live or die.” 

And that’s not fair. It’s not fucking _fair_ , because Steve has worked hard to get to where he is now, he’s clawed his way back from those nights when he would sit on his bed and hold his gun and wonder if he pulled the trigger how long it would take them to find his body. He’s _better_ now. He knows what it’s like to be suicidal, and this mission wasn’t _about_ that. 

Steve has been working for months to undo the damage that he’d done as part of SHIELD. Every mission he’d ever been involved in, one by one, methodically deconstructed for traces of HYDRA—and at least a third of them have turned up as corrupt, so far. Steve has been trying his best to right the wrongs he can, whether it involves testifying in court, or tracking down evidence of innocence, or liberating the wrongly imprisoned. 

Sometimes, the effects of his actions are too far-reaching, too complex for such simple solutions. He killed leaders and threw communities into disarray. He destabilized entire _countries_. How does one man fix a civil war? 

So Steve does what he can. Natasha has helped him, when she’s able, and Steve knows that in her heart she feels the guilt just as sharply as he does. The difference is that where he’s decided to backtrack and fix every mistake, she’s decided to move forward and try again. 

“How many more files are left?” Natasha asks tiredly. 

“Only a dozen,” Steve says. 

“And provided that you don’t martyr yourself on your own sword of guilt before you finish—” 

“ _Fuck you._ ” 

“—what are you going to do when this is over?” 

Steve takes in a deep breath, and lets it out again. It’s a fair question. 

“I don’t know,” he says.

“SHIELD is rebuilding. Coulson is in charge, now, and they’re—” 

“No,” Steve says immediately. 

“I said the same,” Natasha agrees. “I’m surprised he hasn’t pitched it to you, yet.” 

“He can pitch whatever he wants. I can’t—I’m not working for anyone again. Not like that.” 

“I don’t see you as the retiring type, Rogers.” 

Steve shrugs, prickling with irritation. “I still have the Avengers.” 

“Four times a year, if that. World only needs saving every few months. That enough for you?” 

“I don’t know,” Steve snaps. 

“Well, you better start figuring it out,” Natasha says unsympathetically. 

  
  


Natasha drops him off at Stark Tower by late afternoon. Steve shuffles through the main lobby, swipes through the private door, and leans against the elevator wall as he’s taken up to the seventy-eighth floor. He’s exhausted, and in pain, and Natasha’s words won’t stop bouncing around his head. 

—SHIELD is back—

—and maybe the Avengers aren’t enough for him— 

—God, is he _ever_ going to stop fighting—

—he isn’t suicidal anymore, he’s _not_ —

—that Omega’s body on the bed, naked and bruised, wrists still tied to the bedposts, a bullet hole in the middle of her head—

—it was worth it, she had been worth it— 

—he hadn’t been trying to _die_ — 

God, he just wants to sleep. 

When he comes into the apartment, Bucky is on the couch reading a book. He looks up, and his expression is immediately stricken. 

“Bucky—” 

“You’re hurt,” Bucky says, dropping the book and rising to his feet. 

“I’ll be fine.” 

“You’re missing half your hair!” 

Steve winces. “There was a fire.” 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” says Bucky, prayerfully. 

Bucky helps him into the shower, cursing him out the entire time, and only disappears long enough to remove Steve’s bloodstained tac gear and return with a pile of clean clothes. 

“Fuckin’ look at you, Jesus, _Jesus_ ,” Bucky mutters, when he has to wedge himself under Steve’s shoulder so Steve can take the step over the ledge of the tub and onto the bathmat. 

Steve takes the t-shirt off the lid of the toilet, but Bucky snatches it away. 

“You couldn’t fuckin’ take your shirt _off_ , what makes you think you’re gonna be able put this one on, huh? Sit the fuck down. Left arm out.” 

Steve collapses onto the toilet seat and lets Bucky dress him like a child, sleeve by sleeve and pantleg by pantleg. 

“Don’t move,” Bucky orders, and Steve slumps back against the toilet and obeys. Bucky reappears with an arsenal of supplies, and begins by holding out two white pills and a dixie cup of water. “Industrial strength. Swallow.” 

Steve swallows the pills dry, and then downs the water after them. He hands the cup back, and Bucky tosses it in the general direction of the trash can. 

“Fuck,” Bucky says, staring down at the box of supplies, and eventually he comes out with a roll of tape. “Give me your hand.” 

“You don’t have to—” 

“Give me your fucking hand.” 

Steve holds out his right hand. His last three fingers are the worst of it, purple and swollen, but the whole hand has been useless since it got smashed by a car door about twelve hours ago. 

Bucky hisses, but sets about taping the fingers together with the utmost care, and when that’s done he turns to taping a winding figure eight around Steve’s ankle. Then he pulls out two chemical ice packs, cracks them both, and carefully tapes them in place. 

“Okay,” Steve says. 

“Shut up,” Bucky says, and pulls out a tube of burn cream next. He slathers it over the singed half of Steve’s head, using his flesh hand, utterly gentle. “Swear to God, you look like a goddamn Batman villain right now, half your hair burnt off, what am I even gonna do with you, huh? Can’t leave you alone for a goddamn day, can I?” 

His hands move over Steve’s neck, slathering a burn with gel, and then to his forearm where another burn has turned blistered and red. 

Steve hasn’t been touched like this in… years. 

Once he’s satisfied, Bucky caps the burn cream and paws through the box until he comes up with a box of bandages. 

“I don’t need those,” Steve says. 

“Yes, you do,” Bucky says. 

“I’m not even bleeding anymore.”

“Yeah, but they still _hurt_. Let me cover ‘em up so they don’t keep rubbing on everything while they heal, all right?” 

Steve stares at him for a long moment. 

Then he starts to cry. 

Bucky almost drops the bandages. “What the fuck.” 

Steve shakes his head, reaching up with his hand to cover his hand with his face—he hates this, but he can’t seem to help it, and he _hates_ it—but Bucky pulls his hand down and says, “No, hey, that’s the broken one,” and Steve cries harder and he doesn’t know _why_. 

“Steve, what’s _wrong?_ ” 

Steve shakes his head again. “I’m sorry,” he says, between hitching breaths. “I’m sorry.” 

“What the fuck for?” Bucky demands. 

“I love you,” Steve says helplessly. 

“Shitting Christ. What’s _in_ those painkillers?” 

Steve continues to cry. 

“I love you too,” Bucky mutters, and briskly tapes up the gash on Steve’s arm and the long slice down his back. He hoists Steve to his feet—Steve is trembling and dizzy at this point, and he tries not to give Bucky too much of his weight but Bucky curses him out some more and then half-carries Steve to the bedroom. 

Steve’s head spins as he goes down on the bed. Bucky pulls back, and Steve reaches out blindly and snags fabric. 

“Please,” he says. The world is floating in and out like breathing, and Steve is suspended in time, and he’s so tired of being alone. “Please.” 

“Okay,” Bucky says. 

And he crawls into bed, tucks himself up real close, his limbs warm and heavy around Steve, tea tree oil and peppermint and below it, Steve’s favorite scent in the world. 

“Bucky,” Steve says, with effort. 

“What?” 

Steve smiles, and says his name again, just because he can. 

  
  


Steve wakes up, hours and hours later, to the sound of Bucky quietly humming _The Battle Hymn of the Republic_. His wounds ache, but not as badly as they had last night, and he can feel the edges of his burns beginning to itch as the skin heals. Bucky isn’t touching him, but Steve can feel the warmth from his body only inches away. 

Moving hurts, but the desire to see Bucky is stronger, so Steve rolls himself over anyway. 

Bucky is propped up on one elbow, and watching Steve with a soft look on his face. 

How many times did Steve wake up to this sight, and not realize what a _gift_ it was?

“Morning,” Steve says. 

“We’re gonna have to shave the rest of your head,” Bucky replies. 

Steve closes his eyes and groans, the song abruptly making sense. “You remember that?” 

“Do I remember having to shave my head in _January_ in _Austria_ because we all went and got head lice? Gosh.” 

“That fucking song.” 

“I don’t really remember the words too much. I know there was a verse about your head, but I’ve just got the one about your chest.” 

“Please don’t.” 

“ _Mine eyes have seen the glory—_ ” 

“Bucky.” 

“— _of his chiseled, hairless chest! It is broader than the Maginot, with muscles breast to breast—”_

“I can’t believe you remember this.” 

_“—Something something something something comes crusading from the West! The Captain marches ooooon.”_

Steve swats him, and Bucky laughs. 

“Pretty good for a swiss cheese brain, huh?” Bucky asks. 

Steve is just glad Bucky doesn’t remember the one about his hairy back. 

“How you feelin’?” Bucky asks, reaching out and running a gentle finger over Steve’s taped fingers. 

“Less stoned,” Steve says, sheepish. 

“You were cute.” 

Steve feels his face go red. “I’m not _cute_.” 

“Sure you are.” 

“What do you know, you’ve got swiss cheese brains.”

“At least I have all my hair.” 

Steve snorts with laughter, helplessly. 

“Hey,” Bucky says, fingers skating up Steve’s arm, up his shoulder, and finally resting at the angle of his jaw, cupping his face gently. 

Steve meets his gaze. “Yeah?” 

“Can I kiss you?”

“Always,” Steve says, and Bucky leans in, slow and careful, and presses the gentlest of kisses to his lips for the first time in seventy years.

  
  


A week later, Steve is at a press conference after heading off a minor alien invasion in the Canadian prairies with the rest of the Avengers. He’s wearing a baseball cap to cover up his bald, half-scabbed-over head, because the beanie he’d turned up in made him look like he was about to rob a bank (according to Tony). 

These are the questions Steve is asked:

“Captain Rogers, what’s it been like to lead the team as an Omega?”

“Can you comment on the relationship between yourself and Black Widow?” 

“How would you respond to the rumors that yourself and Howard Stark used to be romantically involved?” 

“What are your thoughts on the location of your statue? Brooklyn or Manhattan, Cap?” 

“Captain, can you address the concerns that have been put forward about the future of the Avengers, if you decide to start a family one day?” 

Tony meets his eyes from a few seats down the table, and his expression says: _I told you so._

So he had

Steve wouldn’t change a thing, though. 

  
  


Steve is pressing the plunger of the syringe, gritting his teeth against the burn in his thigh as the medicine infiltrates, when he hears footsteps go past the bathroom. He hears them pause, and then backtrack, and when he looks up, Bucky is standing in the doorway. 

Steve is surprised to see him at all. Today is Tuesday, which means Bucky had spent the morning in therapy with Dr. Thompson, and on therapy days Steve rarely sees him until at least late evening, if at all. It's the only reason Steve hadn't bothered to shut the door to the bathroom in the first place. 

But here Bucky is, hollow-eyed and pale. His eyes are fixed on Steve’s hand. 

“Suppressants,” Steve explains, pulling the needle out and massaging the area a little bit. 

He really hopes that this isn’t going to trigger a flashback, or another hair-pulling episode. God only knows how many needles HYDRA had stuck Bucky with over the years, and what kind of memories this could dredge up. 

Bucky’s eyes move to the vials sitting on the counter, and then back to Steve. 

Steve reaches out to grab the second vial. “I’m good, Buck. Go back to your room, or… wherever you were going. It’s okay.” 

Bucky steps into the bathroom. 

Steve tenses just a little, watching his fluid movements as he approaches, but even though his expression is quiet, it’s not lifeless. Those eyes are Bucky’s eyes. The Soldier isn’t here right now. 

Bucky kneels before him and takes the vial out of his hands. Then he takes an alcohol swab, cracks off the top of the vial, wipes it down, and then flips the vial upside down and draws up the medication like he’s done this a hundred times before. 

He only pauses after the vial has been drained completely, to look at Steve, and then at the syringe, and then back at Steve. 

“Yeah,” Steve confirms quietly. “The whole thing.” 

Bucky nods once, and then flicks the syringe a few times to dispense the bubbles. 

Steve watches quietly as Bucky takes another alcohol swab, wipes down a patch of skin on the meat of Steve’s thigh, and then lines up the syringe. There’s only the briefest moment of hesitation before he slips the needle in. 

“Thank you,” Steve says, after it’s done. 

Bucky doesn’t reply. He flicks up the safety cap on the syringe and places it on the sink, and then sits back on his feet, staring at the floor. 

“Bucky?” Steve asks tentatively. 

“‘M sorry,” Bucky mumbles. 

“For what?” Steve asks, confused. 

Bucky shakes his head, still not looking at him. 

Steve slides off the toilet seat and onto the floor next to him. “Hey. What’s wrong?” 

Up close, Steve can hear Bucky breathing slightly too fast, and the jagged edge to each breath. His hands are twisting together in his lap, like he’s itching to start pulling at his hair again. He’s panicking. 

Steve reaches out, but Bucky jerks back immediately. 

“Bucky—” 

But Bucky is scrambling to his feet, muttering something Steve can’t understand, and Steve watches him run from the bathroom, and then listens to the sound of his feet on the carpet down the hallway, and finally winces at the slam of the bedroom door. 

Therapy days are hard. 

  
  


Steve and Bucky now sleep in the same bed, most nights. 

When they’d first mated, they had spent every night curled up around each other, taking elbows to the ribcage and knees to the groin as part and parcel. They had been young and giggling, and in love with being loved. Steve remembers waking up tangled in Bucky, arms and legs and chins, and feeling a thrill down to his very _toes_ because he was so goddamn lucky to be here, in this bed, with the man he loved, and he wanted to wake up like this _every day_. 

But years of marriage had aged their love, and what had once been exciting and new instead became a steady comfort of life. They went to bed, not wrapped together, but side by side, sometimes touching, sometimes not. Steve hadn’t needed to fall asleep chest-to-back anymore to know that Bucky was there, would _always_ be there. Little touches replaced the all-encompassing burrow—a hand through his hair, an arm over his chest, a leg pressed between his thighs. Easy. Steadfast. 

Now it’s a new century, and a lot of things are different. 

Now there are nightmares, and metal arms, and silence where there was once snoring. Now Bucky keeps reaching over for Steve in his sleep and hitting him right between the shoulderblades, because he’s reaching for a body that Steve hasn’t had for seventy-two years. 

But Steve wakes up almost every morning, with the same scent on his sheets that was there back before the war, in a bed that’s no longer cold and lonely, and he doesn’t care that they’re still working out how to fit together again. It’s enough that they’re both here, and trying. 

This morning, Steve wakes an hour earlier than he usually would on a Saturday. He slaps the alarm with verve, and flops onto his back.

After a moment, Steve hears the sounds of Bucky shifting, and eventually he rolls all the way over onto his side to face him. Bucky’s on the far end of the bed, fighting a yawn as he wakes up and slipping a hand under his pillow, just like he does every morning when he first wakes up. 

Steve knows there’s a gun there. He’s lost track of how many weapons he’s found hidden around the apartment, usually rotating positions every few weeks, but Bucky always has a gun under his pillow and a knife between the mattress and the headboard. Steve doesn’t mind. He slept with a gun under his own pillow for almost a year, for far more dangerous reasons. 

“Morning,” Steve says, watching him on a propped elbow. 

“Morning,” Bucky says, and squints at the clock. “Early.” 

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. He reaches his hand out and leaves it in the middle distance, an offer but not a demand. “I’m gonna pick up breakfast for Resistance on my way in. I owe them for missing my other class on Monday.” 

“Wasn’t like you had a choice about it,” Bucky complains. 

“Still,” Steve says. “They were relying on me. I feel bad.” 

Steve had, in fact, been tied up in court on Monday well into the evening, testifying on behalf of a man that he’d wrongly imprisoned two years ago. Missing class had been unavoidable, but it had also been the third class that he’d missed with Resistance in the past two months, and he _likes_ teaching there. 

Bucky takes Steve’s hand, and tugs a little. “You don’t need that long to get them breakfast.” 

“I was gonna get Ladurée,” Steve says.

“What, from _Lenox Hill?_ The fuck is wrong with Magnolia, or Breads? They all make the same overpriced bagels, anyway.” 

“Actually, Magnolia Bakery doesn’t sell bagels—” 

“Shut up,” Bucky declares, and tugs on his hand again. 

Steve tips over dramatically onto his stomach with a groan, face-planting into the pillow, and starts laughing when Bucky grumbles irritably and shoves at his shoulder. He comes up laughing still when Bucky eventually gets the leverage to flip him over, a hand on his shoulder and a knee wedged under his hip. 

And then Bucky is on top of him, heavy and warm, and Steve can’t help the grin that stretches across his face, so wide it almost hurts. 

“You’re such a brat,” Bucky says affectionately. 

Steve reaches up and tucks a stray lock of hair behind Bucky’s ear. This close, Bucky’s scent is inescapable, and the weight of him makes it hard to breathe, but Steve doesn’t mind because it’s a reminder that Bucky is no longer whipcord thin like he’d been months ago, fresh off the streets and half-starved. All the cooking Bucky has done has been good for his body. He’s heavier, and he’s healthier.

Bucky looks at him for a long, long time. 

“What?” Steve asks. 

Bucky hesitates. His eyes flick down, and one finger traces the lump of Steve’s dog tags under his t-shirt. 

Steve brings his hand back up, this time tracing down the side of Bucky’s face, over his eyebrow and the wrinkles at the corner of his eye and the rasp of his stubble, and the fine angle of his jaw. “What?” 

“Sex,” Bucky says. 

Steve goes cold, and his hand freezes in place. 

“Sex?” he repeats. 

“I want to have it,” Bucky says, and now his eyes are averted, like he’s already afraid he’s said the wrong thing. “With you. Some time.” 

Steve’s heart races with an old, old fear. “You do?” 

“Of course I do,” Bucky says, with determination. “You’re—my Omega. I love you. I want to have sex with you.” 

He sounds scared. Like he’s terrified of rejection. Like he’s been waiting to ask for this for a long, long time, and the courage it took to ask was almost too much to rally. 

“Okay,” Steve says, because what else can he say? 

So Bucky wants to have sex. That’s a normal thing to ask for. They’ve been married for _seventy-eight_ years, they’ve had sex at least a thousand times before, they’ve been sleeping in the same bed for a month and they’ve been kissing just as long. Sex is a logical progression. 

This will be fine. 

Steve will be fine. 

  
  


That day at class, Steve lets two dozen Omegas knock him flat on his ass over and over again. 

For the first time in a while, he’s conscious of how he towers over all of them. He’s _huge_. He’s thick and meaty, built like a brute, built to smash and kill—nothing like the delicate, lithe little Omegas that he teaches. They all have slender wrists and soft skin and eyes too big for their faces. 

Steve used to look like that, once. 

He’d never been an Omega who was overly concerned with his looks—and he hadn’t had the money to be, anyway. He hadn’t dressed to emphasize his tiny waist, or worn rouge to heighten his cheekbones. But it had made him shiver, the way Bucky would look at him when he could hold both of Steve’s wrists above his head with only one hand, and jerk him off with the other. It had made feel so _safe_ , when his head was tucked under Bucky’s chin. 

After the serum, Steve hadn’t been able to look in the mirror for months. Bucky had only been able to stand him when the artificial pheromones had worn off between doses. The thought of Bucky seeing him naked—seeing his broad chest, his thick thighs, his frankly _terrifying_ cock—had been untenable. The possibility of rejection, of disgust, had been too high. 

And then Bucky had been dead, and Steve had been alive, and it hadn’t _mattered_ what he’d looked like. Even after Bucky was alive again, it hadn’t mattered. Even when Bucky had come _home_ , it hadn’t mattered. 

But now Bucky wants to have sex. 

And it’s all Steve can think about. 

  
  


Steve throws himself into the last few missions he has to sort through, from his time at SHIELD. Three of them are cut-and-dry cases that the US court system has already corrected using records from the SHIELD data dump, one is actually a legitimate mission that seems to have been untouched by any HYDRA agenda, but the last one is not quite so simple. 

In his time at SHIELD, Steve had been involved in several missions to Luhansk, a major city in the Ukraine. They had been told that the local government there was corrupt, involved in a human trafficking ring that SHIELD had been trying to deconstruct for years, and that every piece of data stolen, every target captured for interrogation, every assassination performed—it would be one step closer to ending the suffering of the hundreds and hundreds of victims being funneled into America to act as slave labor. 

Now, it’s obvious that what Steve and his team had actually done was allow HYDRA to take over the entire city. 

It’s the sort of catastrophe that Steve would usually call too complex to handle on his own, and he’d forward his research on to relevant parties, except. 

_Except_. 

As Steve digs deeper and deeper, trying to determine exactly how far the corruption extends, he notices that over the past four months there’s been a subtle shift away from HYDRA. Certain members have gone missing. Key funds have dwindled. Certain business fronts have closed. 

He spends three straight days buried in research, until finally at two in the morning he has a breakthrough. He has papers spread around him, photographs of key players taped above lists of information, and there are seventy-something tabs open on his browser, and he finally uncovers CCTV footage from a councilman’s house the night he’d disappeared. Several dark figures are present, unidentifiable between the grainy footage and their masked faces, but one short figure stands out amongst the rest. 

Steve would know that fighting style anywhere. 

After all, she’d spent almost a year training him. 

  
  


“Is SHIELD really running clean these days?” Steve asks. 

“I told you I turned them down,” Natasha answers, after a pause. “Did Coulson finally call you?” 

“No,” Steve says. “But I know you. You looked into them before you turned them down. What did you find on them?”

“That they’re as clean as they were last time I looked into it, seven years ago,” Natasha says. 

“What does that mean?” 

“I means I looked, and I couldn’t find anything suspicious, but I did the same thing seven years ago, and I was wrong then. I could be wrong again. What did you find?” 

Steve stares at the mess that is his living room. “I’m not sure. Remember Luhansk?” 

“Yes,” Natasha says, after a pause. “It’s under HYDRA’s control, now.” 

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. “That’s what I thought. But the last two months, it looks like someone’s been chipping away at that. Maybe someone from SHIELD.” 

“...Interesting,” Natasha says. 

“Can you get me into SHIELD’s new network?” 

“Mm, now _that’s_ a tall order.” 

“Coy doesn’t suit you, Nat.” 

“On the contrary, it suits me rather well, with people who aren’t _you_. I’ve met flying bricks with more subtlety.” 

“Wow. They make bricks that fly now?” 

“Shut up. Check your email—the extra one. I have a backdoor in, but it’s not an all-access pass, and it’s going to leave fingerprints, so please wear some metaphorical gloves.” 

“You’re the best,” Steve says. 

“If this leads to you on another suicide mission, I am going to shove my boot so far up your ass you’ll be tasting leather for _weeks_ , Rogers.” 

  
  


Steve hears the sound of the oven timer being set, and then familiar footsteps into the living room. Dinner is something spicy, he can tell by the smell in the air already. 

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Bucky says, as he comes into the living room. “What’s with the stuffed cricket?” 

Steve looks over at the purple cricket plush that arrived about a week after the last Avenger’s press conference, and the corners of his mouth tug upward into a smile. “Tony,” he says. 

“Okay,” Bucky says slowly, coming to a stop in front of the cricket where it's sitting on the bookcase. He prods it, without any apparent expectation. “Because you both love insects so much?” 

“It’s a lucky cricket. From a Disney movie,” Steve explains. “We’ll have to watch it—it’s a good one, one of the last they did with normal animation.” 

“Am I gonna get another rant about the evils of modern animation techniques?” Bucky asks, long sufferingly, as he turns away from the bookcase and meanders over to where Steve is seated on the couch. 

“I didn’t say that they were _evil_. I just think that they don’t use their technology to its full potential, most of the time. There’s no sense of art—” 

“Steve, for the love of God—” 

“— _Princess Kaguya_ was robbed—” 

“I know, I know, Disney is a capitalistic demon empire and _Big Hero Six_ shouldn’t have won the Oscar. You’ve told me before. Are we gonna watch the cricket movie tonight or not?” 

Bucky sits down on the couch next to Steve, and whereas four months ago he would have sat on the complete opposite side, he now sits shoulder and shoulder and hip to hip. 

Steve’s heartbeat immediately picks up, at the close contact. 

He reminds himself that they are in the living room, and there’s an oven timer on, and Bucky is _not_ going to suggest that they have sex right now. 

It’s a reminder Steve has to give himself several times a day, now, most recently this morning when they’d started making out in bed, and Bucky had started to become a little more aggressive, and his hands had started to wander, and just when Steve had really started to panic Bucky had broken away suddenly, and muttered something about the bathroom before scrambling out of bed. 

“Steve?” Bucky prompts. 

“Sorry,” Steve says, shaking his head a little. “Yeah. We can watch the cricket movie tonight.” 

“Luhansk?” Bucky asks, peering at the tablet. 

“Yeah,” Steve says, though he presses the power button once to lock the screen, and sets it to the side. “I had a few missions there. Looks like HYDRA’s pretty active, still.” 

Bucky doesn’t reply. 

When Steve turns to look at him, his eyes are unfocused, and his face has gone eerily blank. 

“Bucky?” Steve asks, laying a careful hand on his arm. 

“I—” Bucky blinks a little, and then pulls his hand away. “There’s a base in Luhansk.” 

Steve feels something terrible begin to pool in the pit of his stomach. “There is?” 

Bucky nods. “I was. They kept me there.” 

He says nothing more, but the look on his face is… awful. 

Steve wants to fly to Luhansk right now and rip the base apart with his bare hands. He wants to find whoever hurt Bucky in that city and wipe them off the face of the _planet_. 

Instead, he takes a fortifying breath, and says, “I’m sorry,” and sits in silence with Bucky until the oven timer goes off. 

And then the next day, he contacts Agent Ivy Robinson. 

  
  


They meet at a diner on the outskirts of Philadelphia—or, as Agent Robinson notes, a Waffle House, which is _very different_ from a diner. 

“Waffle Houses are a cornerstone of American wellbeing,” Agent Robinson informs him, after they’ve both been handed laminated single-page menus. “FEMA uses the status of the local Waffle Houses to determine the impact of a disaster. Really. Look it up. It’s called the Waffle House Index.” 

“Right,” says Steve, scanning the menu and feeling very glad that he has the serum to protect his arteries from what he’s about to eat. 

After they’ve ordered (and Steve has ordered his hash browns ‘chunked’ because it was the least terrifying option of about six that the waitress had listed off), Steve wastes no time getting down to business, and luckily, Agent Robinson seems to be on the same page. Steve knew he liked her for a reason. 

“Yeah, we’ve been in Luhansk,” she tells him readily. “It’s been an ongoing thing for the past… two months, or so, I think. How do _you_ know about it?” 

“I hear things,” Steve says, going for ‘coy’ and probably landing somewhere closer to ‘flying brick’. 

“Right,” Agent Robinson says skeptically. “Okay. Better question: _why_ do you want to know?” 

Steve exhales. “Because I think I might volunteer to help.” 

She stares. “You’re coming back to SHIELD?” 

“Maybe,” Steve says, uneasily. “I haven’t decided yet. I wanted more information first.” 

She studies him, and then slowly sits back in her seat. “Okay. Well, that’s fair, I guess. What do you want to know?” 

“Why Luhansk?” 

“Because there’s intelligence that it’s the location of a powerful weapon. And it’s the only major area where we’ve managed to get a foothold against them.” 

“What kind of weapon?” Steve asks. 

Agent Robinson shrugs. “Don’t know. SHIELD got less corrupt, not less opaque.” 

“How close are they to retrieving it?” 

“Not very, I don’t think. It’s been slow-going. You might have... _heard..._ that we aren’t exactly working alone.” 

“I heard,” Steve says, nodding. “But not in… as much detail as I’d like.” 

“That’s because there’s a lot of people who are unhappy that we’ve decided to partner with the bratva,” Agent Robinson says. 

Steve’s jaw drops. “You what?” 

She grins, sharply. “I thought you’d have known.” 

“No,” Steve says, floored. “The _mob?_ ” 

“Well,” Agent Robinson says, shrugging one shoulder, “they started this whole thing. After we effectively handed their entire city off to HYDRA, they formed more or less as a response to the corruption there. They’ve been working against HYDRA ever since. SHIELD partnered with them because they decided it would be more efficient to join forces rather than fighting two enemies at once.” 

“Makes sense,” Steve agrees, still a little dumbfounded at the idea of SHIELD agreeing to collaborate with anyone, let alone foreign mobsters. 

Agent Robinson goes on to delineate a fairly thorough history of what SHIELD has accomplished so far in Luhansk, and then their current objectives, short-term and long-term. Everything she says matches what Steve has read about, and expands on it in far greater detail than he’d managed to find through his own research. By the time Steve finishes his food, he’s convinced. 

_If this leads to you on another suicide mission_ , Natasha says in the back of his mind, but Steve remembers Bucky’s face when he’d talked about Luhansk, and it’s easy to ignore her voice. 

“Tell Coulson I’m interested,” Steve says, laying down three twenties on the table. 

Agent Robinson gives the money a startled look. 

Steve pays no attention. He enjoys tipping ludicrously. It’s one of his most favorite things about having millions in backpay. 

“I’ll let him know,” Agent Robinson says, and they shake hands on it. 

  
  


Steve and Bucky have a good day. 

It’s Thursday, so Bucky has no therapy and Steve has no classes. Bucky spends the day wandering the city. Lately, he’s taken to returning with a horde of modern treasures to experiment with—this time a bag of Flamin' Hot Cheetos, dry shampoo, and something called a Snuggie. Steve spends the day with the New York Public Library, helping them to curate an exhibit on Omegas during World War II. They eat steak and potatoes for dinner, with Cheetos for dessert (verdict: delicious), and they watch _Pan's_ _Labyrinth_ after that, at Sam's recommendation. 

It's a good day. A _very_ good day. 

So Steve supposes that he shouldn't be surprised when Bucky decides that tonight is the night. 

They start off by kissing, and Steve thinks, _okay_. The heat of Bucky’s mouth is not unwelcome, the familiar push of his tongue and the scrape of barely-there stubble on his jaw, the way their noses brush together, it’s all very good. It goes on for so long that Steve honestly starts to relax a little. 

But then Bucky leverages himself up so that instead of laying next to Steve, he’s on _top_ of him. One elbow is planted on the bed, but Bucky’s free hand starts to move lower down Steve’s body, and Bucky’s mouth follows, trailing kisses down Steve’s jaw and then finally landing at his neck and— 

_Okay_ , Steve thinks, when Bucky bites down and pleasure sparks down his spine. It feels _good_. Nerve endings that haven’t lit up since before Steve went into the ice suddenly sing with pleasure, and despite himself, Steve finds himself starting to grow hard. They had done this before, during the war, just like this. Pressing, mouthing, rubbing through their clothes in the dark—this was just like that. 

And maybe Bucky remembers, because his hand trails down Steve’s t-shirt and stops at the hem. 

_Don’t,_ Steve wants to say, but when he opens his mouth Bucky licks at his neck over the spot he’d just bitten, and what escapes instead is a helpless groan of pleasure. 

His shirt is pulled up. 

Steve is flooded with the sensation of _donotwant_ , sudden and raging, and the way his body goes rigid makes Bucky pause. 

“Okay?” Bucky asks, tentatively. 

It’s dark, Steve reminds himself. Bucky can’t even see him. It’s not like Bucky doesn’t know how big Steve is, with his clothes on. It’s not like Bucky hasn’t seen him naked before, between wartime bird baths in the creek and all the injuries Bucky has tended to over the years. 

“I’m okay,” Steve says in a thin voice. 

He makes his body relax. He brings his arms back around Bucky, one between his shoulderblades, and one at the small of his back, and he tips his chin down to brush his lips over Bucky’s forehead. After a moment, Bucky trails a hand over Steve’s bare belly, trembling with anticipation. 

Bucky’s lips move upward again, capturing Steve’s mouth with his own, and he kisses hard and fast. 

Steve tries to get on board, does his best to ignore the cool night air on his stomach, and with every kiss it gets easier. 

_Okay_ , he thinks. _Okay, okay, this is okay. I want this. I want to do this, this is okay._

Bucky shifts a little, and between kisses Steve hears him take in a shuddering, jagged breath. The hand on his belly trails lower, toys with the band of his boxers, and when Bucky kisses him hot and desperate, Steve feels a flash of desire race down his spine again, at odds with the simmering panic. He grips Bucky tighter, tells himself, _you can do this, this feels good, you like this_ , and with the next kiss Steve feels something low and heady clench with _need_ , and he thrusts upward, seeking friction— 

It takes him a moment to realize. 

He falls back onto the mattress, cold nausea sweeping over him, eyes snapping open to stare at the dark ceiling, and Bucky is _still trying to kiss him_. 

“Stop,” Steve says weakly, and he tries to coordinate his hands but they’re numb with shock. They push at Bucky feebly. “Stop, stop, stop, Bucky, _stop._ ” 

Bucky stops. 

Steve scrambles up the mattress, away from him, reaches out blindly and manages to flick the lamp on. Bucky flinches at the sudden brightness, pulling away from Steve. He’s staring, eyes wide, and the light is on, so he can _see_. 

Steve’s knees coming up to his chest on pure instinct. He wants to be small. He doesn’t want to be naked, exposed like this, he wants to _hide_ and never be seen again. He’s never hated this body more, because Bucky clearly hates it too, because— 

Because Bucky hadn’t been hard.

Not at all.

Not even a little bit. 

Bucky brings a trembling hand up, and pulls it over his face. “Fuck,” he says, raggedly. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” Steve says numbly. “It’s not your fault.” 

“I can try again,” Bucky says, looking up at Steve with desperation. “I can—Steve, I can do this.” 

Steve feels nauseous. “No.” 

“I _want_ to,” Bucky insists. Almost pleads. 

“It’s okay,” Steve says. His arms are wrapped around himself, and he knows he’s breathing too fast. “It’s okay. I know I don’t—” He chokes on it, for a moment. “I know I don’t look like—like I used to.” 

“It doesn’t have anything to do with how you _look_ ,” Bucky snaps. 

“You don’t have to lie!” 

“I’m not lying, I—” 

“There’s no fake Alpha pheromones this time, Bucky, there’s no _excuses_ ,” Steve says bitterly, closing his eyes against the tidal wave of self-loathing. He can feel his throat tightening, and a hot stinging behind his eyes. 

“I’m sorry, Steve,” Bucky says desperately. “I _tried_.” 

“It’s not your fault,” Steve says, against tears. 

“It’s gonna come. One day, I swear, Steve—” 

“Stop.” 

“—I’m getting better—” 

“Bucky, please—” 

“—every day, I promise, I’m working on it—” 

“But it’s _not going to get better!”_ Steve bellows. 

There is silence, and when he forces his eyes open, Bucky is staring at him, expression raw. 

“ _This_ isn’t going to change,” Steve hisses furiously, gesturing at himself with one disgusted hand. “This is how I _am_ now, and you’re not attracted to it, you never have been, I’m not an _idiot_. I know I’m—I’m too big. I’m ugly. No Alpha would ever want someone like _me_.” 

“ _What_ ,” Bucky says. 

Steve sets his jaw, makes himself meet Bucky’s eyes. “It’s true. It’s always been true.” 

Bucky gapes at him. “You. _What?_ No, that is _not true_.” 

“I think it’s pretty fucking obvious that it is,” Steve retorts, with a sharp gesture at Bucky’s crotch. 

"You’re _gorgeous_ , Steve. I’m the one who—” 

“Who just isn’t attracted to Alphas, it’s fine—” 

“I’m not attracted to _anyone!”_

Steve, mouth open to fire back, stops short. 

Bucky folds in on himself a little, dropping his gaze, but his face is resolute. “I can’t. Ever since HYDRA, unless I’m in a rut, I _can’t_. I don’t know what they did to me, how they fucked me up, but I can’t even jerk off without having a goddamn panic attack.” 

“But,” Steve says, staring at him. “But you said you wanted to have sex. You _asked_.” 

“Because I was tired of you _sacrificing_ everything for me!” Bucky explodes. 

Steve _stares_. “You thought I was sacrificing… sex?” 

“You’re taking heat suppressants, aren’t you?” 

Steve shakes his head. “I was—Bucky, I’ve always been on those. It has nothing to do with you.” 

“That’s not true,” Bucky accuses, frustrated. “Don’t lie to me, Steve, that’s _not true_. In Russia, last year. You were about to go into heat. I could _smell_ it. You weren’t taking suppressants then, you only started after I came back, and I know it wasn’t a fucking coincidence.” 

“I—no,” Steve protests. 

Bucky stares at him unflinchingly. 

“ _No_ ,” Steve says again, more strongly. “I—Bucky. Yes, I stopped taking them while I was looking for you. I stopped taking everything—my Pseuds, my suppressants, all of it. I was so… tired of being on drugs. I just wanted to be normal for a while. Than I had two heats, over in Europe, and… they were both horrible.” 

“You used to love your heats,” Bucky says, unconvinced. 

“Well that was before they lasted for nine days, and I spent them _alone_ ,” Steve snaps. 

Bucky flinches. 

Shit.

“No,” Steve says immediately. “Bucky, no, I—even if you wanted to, even if you were better, and you wanted to spend a heat with me—” 

“Steve, it’s okay—” 

“I don’t _want_ to have heats,” Steve insists. 

Bucky brings a hand up to his face again, pressing his thumb and his index finger into his closed eyes. “Fine. Okay.” 

Steve swallows. 

But he wants Bucky to _believe him_ , dammit. 

“Something… happened, okay?” he says, reluctantly. “Over in Russia. After the fight in the house, when my heat was coming on.” 

Bucky’s eyes snap open, and he goes very, very still. 

Steve forces himself to continue. “I was still injured, from the fight, and it was the middle of the night, and I was halfway into heat and trying to get to a safehouse, but I had to stop for gas. And. And I was stupid, I wasn’t paying attention. There were two drunks, there. Alphas.” 

“Whatever they did to you—” Bucky snarls. 

“They didn’t,” Steve says quickly. “I almost—they tried, but they didn’t. I got away.” 

There’s a creaking noise that Steve belatedly realizes is the sound of Bucky’s metal fist grinding against itself, clenched too tightly. Bucky’s chest is heaving with deep, carefully measured breaths, and there’s a fetal glint in his eye. He’s ready for murder. 

“Nothing _happened_ ,” Steve insists. “But. It, uh. It scared me pretty good. Wasn’t too interested in heats, after that.” 

Bucky’s expression remains unchanged. 

Steve uncurls enough to reach out, and lay a careful hand on his thigh. “Really. Honestly, nothing happened. It didn’t get that far.” 

“It never should have happened in the first place,” Bucky growls. 

“No,” Steve agrees. 

“I should _never_ have left you at that house,” Bucky says furiously. “I shouldn't have left you alone when I knew you were going into heat, I should have _stayed_.” 

“What, so I could have been there when you went into your rut, and we both could have lost our minds and spent a week fucking in a shot-out HYDRA house in the back end of Russia?” Steve demands. “Look at us after trying to have _normal_ sex, we're a fucking mess. I’m sure sharing a cycle together without any ability to consent would have gone _great_.” 

Bucky’s scowl deepens. 

“Look,” Steve continues, rubbing little circles on the meat of Bucky’s thigh with his thumb, attempting to soothe. “I didn’t bring it up just to, I don’t know, make you feel bad for me. I just wanted to make it clear that I’m not taking suppressants because of _you_. I have… I have my own reasons." 

Bucky takes in a deep breath, and as he lets it out his shoulders visibly relax. 

“Okay?” Steve asks. 

Bucky nods. 

“You really… asked to have sex, even though you didn’t want to, just because you thought _I_ wanted to?” Steve asks, hesitantly, thumb pressing gently into Bucky's warm skin. 

Bucky glares. “ _You_ said yes just because you thought _I_ wanted to have sex, even though _you_ didn’t want to.” 

It’s... a fair point. 

The thing is,, Steve had always thought that there was nothing he wouldn’t do for Bucky. He’s loved him endlessly, helplessly, over nearly a century and through wars and across continents. Bucky is so loyal, and kind, and funny, and—he’s the best thing that ever happened to Steve, and he doesn’t deserve any of what’s happened to him since he fell from that train. And Steve has always known, _I would do anything for him_. Laws mean nothing where Bucky is concerned. Steve would give up the shield in a heartbeat, would _die_ for him without a second thought. 

So of course, when Bucky had asked to have sex, there had been no question that Steve would agree even though fundamentally, down to his very _bones_ , the thought of having sex had terrified him. 

Anything for Bucky. 

And look what had happened. 

Maybe, Steve realizes, sometimes it’s not healthy to love like that. Maybe there needs to be some limits. 

He thinks about the look on Bucky’s face when Steve had pushed him away, and the desperation in his voice when he’d tried to apologize over and over for not being able to get hard. He thinks further back, to the tremble of Bucky’s hand when he’d slipped it beneath the band of Steve’s boxers, and realizes with a surge of nausea that it hadn’t been a tremble of anticipation, but of terror. 

If Steve had just been honest, they could have avoided this entire clusterfuck. 

Maybe… maybe Steve needs to start putting himself first, just a little bit. 

“Hey,” Bucky says softly, hand coming to rest over Steve’s. 

Steve looks up at him. 

“You really think you’re… ugly?” Bucky asks, tentative. 

Steve’s stomach _squirms_ , and he looks away. “No,” he says. “Not… not ugly.” 

“You think I don’t like how you look,” Bucky rephrases. 

Steve shrugs. 

“You know what I see, when I look at you?” 

"I know I’m not ugly,” Steve says, staring at the sheets, heart racing. “I know that I’m attractive, I know—” 

“Shut up,” Bucky says. “I see the guy who stormed a factory of Nazis with absolutely no training, in the middle of the night, by _himself_ , just to save my sorry butt. I see a guy who’s strong enough to hold me down when the Soldier starts to take over, and I see a guy who’s strong enough to keep me from hurting _myself_. Do you know how safe I feel, when you pin me down?”

“That’s... unhealthy,” Steve says. 

Bucky shrugs, unconcerned. “We left ‘healthy’ behind in 1943, Stevie. I like the way you look now. You’ve got these long legs that chased me over half of fuckin’ Europe, and these hands—” Bucky grabs Steve’s hands, holding them between his own, thumbs rubbing over his knuckles. “God, how many times have these big ol’ hands saved my life, huh?” 

Steve shakes his head. 

“And you know what else I love? When I put my head on your chest, I can’t hear the goddamn mucus rattling in your lungs anymore. You used to sound like a fuckin’ haunted house. It was disgusting.” 

Despite himself, Steve laughs. 

Bucky moves one hand away from Steve’s hands to his chest, right over his heart. “And this doesn’t skip beats anymore, and make you faint durin’ the summer—” 

“I never _fainted_.” 

“—and you can hear outta both ears, now, which means you can’t pull that ‘Oh, you must’ve said it while you were on my _left_ side Bucky,’ bullshit anymore when you forget to grab something at the grocery store—” 

"It was never bullshit!” 

“—and this is still the same stupid brain that fell in love with me when you were just a punk teenager, and hasn’t left me alone ever since,” Bucky says, running a hand through Steve’s hair and coming to a stop at the base of Steve’s neck, resting there, cupping the back of his head. 

Steve’s breath catches in his throat. 

“I don’t remember a lotta things, Steve, so maybe I never told you during the war, I don’t know. But I love you, no matter what you look like—and I like how you look, like this. I like it a lot. Okay?” 

“Okay,” Steve whispers, overwhelmed. 

“Good,” Bucky says, hand falling from the back of Steve’s neck and coming back to grasp Steve’s own hands, and he squeezes them gently. 

“I don’t—I still need time,” Steve says tentatively. “Maybe therapy. I don’t know. I’ve been feelin’ like this for… a long time.” 

“Well, dollface, it’s not like my dick’s up for a party right now, anyway,” Bucky says amiably. “Pretty sure I can wait.” 

Steve laughs. “It might be a while.” 

“Yeah, well, we’ve got time,” Bucky says. 

And they do. 

They really, really do. 

  
  


Steve has never been to the rebuilt SHIELD facility before. It’s nice. There are more lights, taller ceilings, and even some tasteful artwork on the walls. 

“Same shit in the canteen, though,” Agent Robinson tells him with a sharp grin, when Steve comments. 

She leads him to Coulson’s office, but when Steve is escorted inside, she doesn’t follow. 

“Big shots only,” she says, waggling her eyebrows. “But come find me afterwards. I’ve got a group of trainees who could use a good ass-kicking.” 

Steve laughs. 

Inside, Coulson and a man Steve hasn’t met before are waiting for him. 

“Director,” Steve says, as he shakes hands with Coulson. 

“Captain,” Coulson replies, and then he nods to the other man. “This is our lead agent on the Luhansk taskforce, Phipps. Phipps, this is Captain Rogers.” 

Steve shakes his hand, and ignores the once-over he receives as he does. 

“Sit, sit,” Coulson directs, taking a seat himself. “Captain, I understand that Agent Robinson has already provided you with a rather extensive briefing on the situation in Luhansk, and you’re interested in rejoining SHIELD to help?” 

“Rejoining, just for this mission,” Steve says carefully. “Nothing else, after this.” 

“The paperwork is the same,” Coulson replies, with a bland smile. 

Steve makes a note to read his hiring paperwork very, _very_ carefully this time around. 

“Regardless, we’d be happy to have you on board,” Coulson continues pleasantly. “It’s unusual, but in this situation, I do believe the benefits outweigh the—ah, administrative work-arounds needed to make it happen. Phipps, why don’t you read him in?” 

Phipps nods, and turns to face Steve. “We’ve been operating in twelve person teams, taking two week stints over at our base camp. So far we’ve been working with two teams, but we’re looking to expand to a third, as the extent of HYDRA’s influence was… unexpected. This may be on-going for quite some time. With your experience, I’d be happy to put you in place as the leader of the third team, Captain.” 

Steve swallows, and nods. 

Two weeks isn’t so long. He’s certainly done longer. 

“I’m sure that Agent Robinson has told you about the work we’ve been doing to untangle HYDRA from the local government, in coordination with some… local organized crime elements. It’s mainly what our missions have focused around, thus far. But, I’ll be honest with you, the real concern is the weapon that HYDRA has stored somewhere in the city.” 

Steve nods. 

“We don’t know what it is, but all our intelligence points to it being _very_ dangerous. We also have good reason to believe that our liaisons over in Luhansk know quite a bit more about it than they’re saying.” 

“So you’re working with them… until you’re working against them,” Steve says. 

Phipps shrugs. “We’re hoping that with enough trust built between all these milk-run exercises, they eventually won’t need any convincing. So far, our rapport has been very promising.” 

It doesn’t sit entirely right with Steve, especially since he’s getting the feeling that once SHIELD obtains this weapon, they’re going to abandon all interest in whatever remains of HYDRA in Luhansk. And what will SHIELD do with the weapon, once they’ve recovered it? 

He’s being paranoid, of course.

SHIELD is clean, now. It’s being led by good people. Steve can _trust_ them. 

“Mission coordination is still a joint effort, mostly led by the locals, but with time, they’ve been slowly allowing us more say,” Phipps continues. “And unfortunately, for the time being, we’re running by their rules, which is to say—they’ll only work with Alphas.” 

Steve pauses, frowning. “Oh,” he says. 

Phipps waves a hand. “Ridiculous, obviously. Like we’re just going to send them every last Alpha agent we’ve got, just because they’re out of date with the resf of the world. We’ve just got all our Betas over there on Psueds and they’ve passed without an issue—shouldn’t be a problem to hook you up with some, too, Cap.” 

Pseuds. 

They want Steve to go back on Pseuds. 

“But—" Steve's chest feels tight all of a sudden, and he fights to keep calm. "—but they’ll know me. They’ll know I’m an Omega."

Phipps shakes his head. “Nah. Sure, they’d recognize you if you showed up in the red white and blue, Cap, but if we stick you in a tac vest and give you a hat, they won’t know you from Adam. Now, currently, we’ve been focusing on—”

They want Steve to pretend to be an Alpha again. 

Steve knows, intellectually, that the idea shouldn’t fill him with so much panic. It’s just for a mission. It’s just pretend. He'd done it for years, and it hadn’t been so bad, why is his heart racing? Why are his hands sweating at the very idea?

He can do that. He can take Psueds again. 

He can go back to living a lie, and smelling wrong, have his glands dry up again, deal with the headaches and the dizziness and the constipation. He can walk down the street and get appreciative looks from other Omegas. 

It’s just one extra injection. 

One extra lie. 

For a mission that will take him an ocean away from Bucky, fighting in a battle already filled with ulterior motives, to retrieve a weapon from one organization and hand it to another, to maybe _die_ in a back alley in the Ukraine, nameless, misgendered, just to right a wrong that Steve hadn’t even known he was _committing_ two years ago. 

What is he even doing here?

Fuck this. 

_Fuck this_. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, interrupting whatever Phipps was saying. 

Phipps and Coulson both give him startled looks. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve says again. “I—apologize for taking up your time, but. I don’t think I’m going to be able to help, after all.” 

Coulson is the first to recover. 

“Captain,” he says, “if you have any reservations, I’m happy to expand on—” 

“No,” Steve says. “I’m sorry. You’re both doing great work—it all sounds great, and I wish you the best of luck with it, but I can’t—I’m sorry. I can’t do it.” 

He rises from his chair. 

“Captain Rogers,” Coulson says, with placating hands up in the air. 

“I’ll see myself out,” Steve says, and heads for the door, ignoring the calls behind him. 

This isn’t where he needs to be right now. 

He’s more than made up for his mistakes with SHIELD, he’s done his best to correct every other corrupted mission he’s led before, and this one—this one is already well in hand with Coulson and Phipps. Steve isn’t going to live a lie for them. He isn’t going to _die_ for them. 

He’s going to go back to New York City, and go to a Duane Reade with Bucky and buy entirely too many expensive hair products, and then go home and eat homemade enchiladas and then curl up together on the couch and watch the next _Lord of the Rings_ movie. 

He’s going to go home, and he’s going to stay there. 

  
  


“Fuck, it’s freezing up here,” Bucky announces, as he smoothly pulls himself up off the iron ladder and onto the platform. “I don’t remember it being this freezing.” 

Steve rolls his eyes, from where he’s been picking the padlock on the door that leads them to the outside. “That’s what the blankets are for.”

“Are you still not through, yet?” 

“It’s rusted!” 

Bucky reaches around Steve, takes the padlock in his metal hand, and summarily crushes it. 

“Bucky!” 

“Exactly how many times a year do you think NYC Park Rangers go into a locked-up monument and climb up a hundred and forty feet on a rickety old ladder, just to check that this lock is still in place?” 

“The Society of Old Brooklynites leads a yearly tour—” Steve begins, but Bucky sighs, and shoulders past him to open the door and step out onto the platform. 

The cold October wind cuts much more sharply than it had on the ground, but this time around Steve doesn’t weigh ninety pounds, his clothing isn’t threadbare and made of cheap cotton, and he’s got a super serum running through his veins. 

And, they’ve brought better booze. 

Bucky sets the backpack on the ground and starts walking around the platform, but Steve stays where he is, completely arrested by the view. 

It’s changed a lot, since 1935. The buildings are taller, the lights are brighter, and there are a whole lot more headlights crossing the bridges over the East River. Steve finds Stark Tower easily, tucked just behind the Chrysler Building, and thinks, not for the first time, that it’s really time for him and Bucky to work on finding their own place again, in a normal apartment building. 

“Steve!” Bucky calls, from further down the platform. “It’s still here.” 

“You’re kidding,” Steve says. 

Bucky waves him over to where he’s knelt on the platform, using his cell phone as a flashlight to illuminate the lower half of the granite wall. 

There’s some graffiti dispersed around the walls, most of it modern in appearance, colorful and air-brushed, but sure enough, underneath it all, still barely visible: 

B B NES  
R ERS, GA AT OF HE WO D 0/1 /35

Steve’s hit with a wave of emotion so strong that he doesn’t know what to do other than reach out and grab Bucky’s hand and squeeze as tight as he can. 

Bucky squeezes back. “Crazy, huh?” 

“Yeah,” Steve says, thickly. 

“You owe me a bottle of gin, Rogers.” 

“Lucky me, I happen to have one right in my backpack.” 

“Whose backpack?” 

“Mine.” 

“Who carried it up a hundred and forty feet?” 

“Who bought the gin that’s inside of it?” 

“Ladies and gentlemen, the greatest tactician of our generation,” Bucky says, and then he presses a kiss to the side of Steve’s head before moving in search of liquor. 

Steve turns around so that he can sit on the cold granite floor, and watches a subway train move across the Williamsburg Bridge. Steve would have to move around the platform to see the other two bridges, and he knows that if he kept moving he would eventually be able to see Prospect Park—the final resting home for his Captain America statue, after much debate—and beyond that, Green-Wood Cemetery where Becca and Jack are buried. Steve asked Bucky a few weeks ago if he wanted to visit, but Bucky had said he wasn't ready yet. 

Maybe for Christmas.

Bucky sets the backpack down next to Steve, and then joins him on the floor. 

Steve pulls the zipper, and removes the first two Snuggies. Tony has seen them, and makes fun of them _relentlessly_ , but Steve personally thinks that it’s one of the best inventions of the twenty-first century, and Tony can keep his regular blankets and suffer with cold arms. 

After the Snuggies comes the bottle of Plymouth, which Bucky immediately snags and cracks open. 

Steve gets covered, pulls the gin away long enough to shove a Snuggie over Bucky’s head, and then enjoys a swig of the stolen gin for himself. Then they settle back against the cold granite wall, shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip, and pass it back and forth in silence for a long time. 

It’s been almost seven months since Bucky came home. 

From the moment Steve woken up in the ICU and found our who had dragged him out of the Potomac, Steve had always known that Bucky was going to get better. There had been no other outcome, in Steve’s mind, not when he was chasing him all over Europe, and not when Bucky finally came home and had days when he forgot English, would rip out chunks of his own hair, or wouldn't eat anything for days on end. Bucky would get better, because Steve would not allow anything else. 

What’s more surprising to him, is that _he’s_ gotten better, too.

Last year, Steve had been sure that not being actively suicidal was the same thing as being fine. That there had been nothing better to hope for. 

These days, more often than not, he’s actually _happy_. 

Some of it is Bucky. Some of it is being able to live as an Omega again. And some of it is probably the therapy that he’d finally agreed to, back in August. He’s started drawing again, and he’s working with Resistance to open his own studio so he can teach self-defense lessons full-time. He has an Instagram. Sam moved up from DC last month, and they jog together every morning, and he comes over for dinner once a week. Last week, he’d dragged Natasha to the Lasker Rink for toddler hockey practice, because Steve thinks babies on ice skates are adorable, and Natasha finds it hilarious when they fall. 

Bucky hasn’t had a rut since the first one in April, and Steve hasn’t had a heat since last December. They haven’t tried anything more than kissing since that disastrous night in August, but Steve doesn’t mind, and Bucky doesn’t seem to either. There are smaller victories to be had—like the first time Steve went to bed without a shirt on, or the first time that Steve woke up with an arm slung around him that wasn’t made of flesh. They have time. There’s no rush. 

“Hey,” Bucky says, making a grabby motion with his hand. “Gimmie the backpack.” 

Steve hands it over, and Bucky plunges a hand inside. 

“So I did some lookin’,” he says. “Mighta had some help, in the end. But. Check it out.” 

He pulls out a piece of paper, and hands it to Steve, who immediately sees that it’s a copy of some old, official-looking document. At the top, it says:

 _STATE OF NEW YORK  
_ _CERTIFICATE AND RECORD OF MARRIAGE_

Steve’s breath catches as he sees the familiar signatures at the bottom. 

“But they—they destroyed this," Steve says, staring. "Back in forty-three, they got rid of our entire marriage. I handed them our certificate myself."

Bucky holds up a finger. “Ah—almost. They wiped James and Steven Barnes’ marriage license, for good. That's gone. What they _didn’t_ think to look for was—” 

Steve starts to laugh, helplessly. “Bucky.” 

“—the marriage license of Mr. and Mrs. Bumes.” 

And sure enough, printed at the top are STEVEN BUMES and JAMES B BUMES. 

"I can't believe you remembered,” Steve says, still laughing. "Oh my God. Bucky, we should _frame_ this."

They can put it next to the photo of their wedding, battered from its travels around Eastern Europe but still lovingly framed and on display in the living room. 

“Actually,” Bucky says, “I was thinkin’ maybe we should fix it.” 

Steve looks over at him, his smile fading. “What do you mean?” 

“I mean, maybe we should go down to city hall and file for a new one. An’ maybe I’ll get a new key for that lock of yours, and I can wear it on my neck, same as you. What do you say?” 

“I think that sounds—real nice,” Steve says thickly, swallowing hard. 

“‘Real nice’, he says. You don’t have a romantic bone in your body, do you?” 

Steve elbows him. “Shut up. Of course I want to marry you again, you idiot.” 

“One condition, though.” 

“What?” 

“You gotta convert, this time. We already did it the Catholic way, and it didn't stick too good. This time we’re doing it Protestant.” 

“Technically, I’ve been a Protestant since 1943,” Steve says. 

“No, Steven Grant Rogers was a Protestant. Steve Barnes is a Catholic, through and through. Nice try.” 

Unbidden, Steve grabs Bucky’s collar and kisses him, fierce and hard.

“Not that I’m complaining,” Bucky says, when they break free, “but I kinda thought that would come, you know. After the proposal. Not after I went and called you Catholic.” 

“I love you,” Steve says, and gives him a watery smile. “Mr. Bumes.” 

“I love you too, Mrs. Bumes.” 

“That’s Mrs. _Captain_ Bumes to you.” 

Bucky wraps his arm around Steve’s shoulders. "Yes, sir, Mrs. Captain."

Eighty years ago, he’d fit under Bucky’s arm so neatly that his head could rest against Bucky’s shoulder, and his whole body was protected from the wind, dwarfed by Bucky even as teenagers. Now they’re the same size, and Steve can’t be tucked away, can’t fit his whole body under one arm anymore. He’s too big for that. 

Instead, Bucky’s hand curls around his shoulder, and their arms press together, and they tip their heads toward each other and rest against each other in the middle distance. 

It’s not the same. 

But it’s still good. 

**Author's Note:**

> And that's all she wrote, folks! Thanks so much for reading. Comments and kudos are love, or come say hi over on [Tumblr](http://the-apocrypha.tumblr.com/). 
> 
> Check out the [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1yTVkSZNCuLRbsqqU6DuKr?si=Yy9nN534RhOYCdPcLmbyaA) over on Spotify. I cannot vouch for the quality, but it is nevertheless the songs I listened to while writing this. 
> 
> Sequel/epilogue/ficlets... not out of the question. Ideas welcome!


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